Apple Watch Series 2 running slower on OS 4.0

I own AW series 2 from day one. With time the watch became slow and less responsive. Starting NRC workout was an 1 minute thing. Touch here, swipe there - wait 10 seconds. I read a lot about AW being laggy and at the and I was forced to take some serious measures. Updating WatchOS on a regular basis only made things worse. Here's what worked for me:

1. I uninstalled all the apps but the native ones. I figured I didn't use them at all anyway.

2. I removed all the watch faces but the ones I actually use.

3. I switched off syncing heavy rotation playlists in Music to prevent tracks taking up some serious space.

4. I turned off detect gym equipment - I run outdoors only.

5. I turned on reduce motion and disabled transparency effects.

6. I switched from recent to favorites while using the dock.

7. Said no to background app refresh.

The watch feels super fast now, sadly a compromise is needed.

I have a open case with Apple Care about this exact issue, we have 3 Series 2 Apple watch’s in our house and they are all experiencing the same problems since updating to Watch OS4. I’m dealing with a senior advisor that apparently has never heard of this problem. You and anyone else with this problem should contact Apple support.

It is very annoying to see that after buying a product, it would be not usable after two years becasue the softwares force you to change the old products.

The new OSs should be not availbe for old devices unless they work exactly the same as before or better.

This was the procedure when Steve Jobs was the CEO.

I am thinking to throw all my Apple Products away.

I my self am dealing with Apple support to work out the problem, their software is causing the problem and it’s up to them to fix this. If you don’t put the problem on Apple then the problem is on you, the only on that can hold the company accountable is you!

The apple recommended answer which always is "Have you tried turning it on and off again? Have you updated you watch iPhone iMac?"

It's poor usability!

For someone who uses apple watch everyday for over 15 hours and also works out at a gym/run, charges phone and watch every day, it's PITA to do everything manually. Even after manual updates, 100% charge, restarting, the older versions have been getting slower as they release new versions.

My apple watch struggles to open a simple workout from the workout app. (The software updates take 35 minutes too)

Im having exactly the same issue, Ive tried to reduce screen animations, deleted some of the apps and reduced amount of notifications in Apple Wach s2. It's still extremely slow, every app I use I have to tap twice or even wait few seconds as the watch screen freezzes. My ipHone 6 is significantly slower than my other one 7, and now Im loosing patience with Apple Watch 2. The funny thing is Ive upgreaded to from Apple Wach series 1 as it was already so slow, now its exactly teh same with 2. Im stuck now with two very slow APPLE watches!

Change to Favorite under Dock setting do help a lots. Otherwise every app require at least 20-30 seconds to load.

Last Sunday I just use Nike App to record my half marathon run and it take at least half a minute to able to Start and also hang for around 10 seconds to display the progress (though it count after press "Start"), however when I press "Stop" the app just hang and quit suddenly. At first the record seems disappear and luckily after few days when I check the Nike Run App again it re-appear.

After update to watchOS 4.0 my watch is also unbearably slow. I thought I’d wait for the updates in hopes of seeing an improvement, but as of watchOS 4.2 this problem is still present.

I Followed all the recommendations in the first reply to this question. Unpaired and re-paired as a new watch. No improvement. After a few month, I gave up and started contacting Apple Support to complain since my watch was still under warranty. I was able to get my watch replaced. After pairing the new Series 2 watch as a new watch (starting from scratch with practically no apps) the watch is still slow, especially the workout app.

Additionally, I have a friend with a series 2 watch who hasn’t updated from watchOS 3 to 4. That watch is a year old and is fully responsive with no slowness or lag.

If a new watch doesn’t help, then this problem is definitely in the watchOS 4 software code. Apple, please pay attention to this post and fix this problem. You guys literally turned all series 2 or lower watches into garbage with the watchOS 4 update.

I've just updated my Apple Watch 2 to watchOS 4.2 and it seems to work fine now!

Good for you. Mine is still the same. The exercise app took forever to respond.

Have you tried updating your watch to 4.2?

4.2 has done nothing to address these problems with Series 2 watches; if anything it made things even slower.

After restarting my watch, performance is much better. But the process is painful, it took me a lot of multiple buttons pressing and patience to turn it off and back to on