Ping iPhone not working with WatchOS2

Just spoke to Apple Support. They are aware of the situation and have escalated the info I provided to engineering. At least they know about it.😕

Ok, I spoke too soon. After updating to 9.01 the ping was working; unfortunately a day later once the iPhone 6 was in sleep mode it stopped working again. Arrrrrg! Glad to hear Apple is aware of it. Hopefully this will be resolved in the next update. It was always the first thing I showed people when they asked about my Apple Watch...now I can't.

Try holding down the "ping" button until your iPhone goes off. I did that and suddenly it works fine. Hopefully that solves the issue.

khurley2000 wrote:

Try holding down the "ping" button until your iPhone goes off. I did that and suddenly it works fine. Hopefully that solves the issue.

Holding down the ping button also activated the iPhone flash and is supposed to make a sound too. Only the flash works in my case.

For what it's worth, I upgraded to the iPhone 6S and I have not yet had a ping problem yet.

This is not a solution, but for those on the edge, the 6S is pretty cool.

Cherrita wrote:

For what it's worth, I upgraded to the iPhone 6S and I have not yet had a ping problem yet.

This is not a solution, but for those on the edge, the 6S is pretty cool.

Cherrita,

Ping your phone. Then play a song out of the iPhone speakers for a couple of seconds. Stop it and ping it again. Does it still work?

Just as a note, iOS 9.0.2 did not solve the problem.

Yes, I did that, and it still works.

I had no end of problems with my previous phone--could never get the ping to work longer than about 2-3 hours before something screwed it up. It's working great now and has for days.

I had this problem too, after m iOS 9 update. Only restarting the phone would help. Hoped it was an issue Watch 2 would fix, but didn't work. I've just done the fix of turning off Siri -- and it worked. I've turned Siri back on, and so far it's still pinging. Although since the problem was random (the worst kind, right? and especially on something you use for this particular purpose) it might be a fluke. But I'm still getting pings 24 hours later.

This seems to resolve the issue on an immediate basis, but as many have related, the fix doesn't last. It will randomly recur. Restarting always fixes it, but does not permanently fix it. I've done the "turn Siri off, ping, then turn Siri back on" fix as described above, and after 24 hours the ping is still working.

Cherrita wrote:

Yes, I did that, and it still works.

I had no end of problems with my previous phone--could never get the ping to work longer than about 2-3 hours before something screwed it up. It's working great now and has for days.

I'm glad it works for you!🙂

This worked right away. I hope it stays that way. Thanks for the tip!

After recently updated my iPhone 6+ and subsequently the watch, I experienced the same issues, tried all the same suggestions. Are you still having trouble getting your's to emit the pinging sound?

I restarted my iPhone and this solved the problem, on the first try. Pinging now works.

I just wanted to share my experiences with the issue:

1. Ping was not working

2. Ping only worked when phone was unlocked (pretty useless)

3. The LED Flash would still work if I held down the ping button (regardless of if the phone was locked)

I am thus deducing that it is an issue with apps clogging the audio channel (a similar issue has been happening with Facebook videos - music will only play at half volume or not at all after going on FB.) So restarting the phone, performing a hard reset, or turning off and on Siri (or in my case I just used Siri) will temporarily fix the problem - that is until another app (FB, Safari, Twitter, Vine) takes up the audio channel so that the phone is confused when we command it to ping from our watches.

Essentially my suggestion is try to remember the last app or video you watched before the problem reoccurred because you might consider deleting and then re-downloading that app (or if it is an Apple app like Safari you would have to do a restore.)

Hopefully this glitch will be resolved in an update soon, but I can say with almost complete confidence that it is not an issue with your Watch, but an issue with your phone's audio channel (if the LED flash feature is working from Watch -> Phone then it is not a communication error, but a sound error on the iPhone's part.)