apple watch not connecting to wifi

Thank god! This fixed it. I was already spoke to Senior Advisor three times.... they scaled it to Engineering and the next step was send it to US (I live in Argentina!). I've tried every single thing I've read on the forums, al the usual, and unusual, procedures and nothing worked... after reading your post took my last chance before sending it out and it connected! Clearly it's an iPhone software issue, or some conflicting app.... The PITA is that I'll have to set ALL the passwords, apps, apps data, etc, manually again after carrying all my iPhone data backup almost since my iPhone 3G.... But the freaking Watch Works....

Now I'll have to do a long and painful troubleshooting to find what is preventing the watch to connect.

It's really annoying that apple cannot fix this, or at least find a solution or easier way to troubleshoot it or whatever! DO SOMETHING APPLE!

Again OhioApple74, you saved me. TNX!

Did the update ever become available for your WiFi problem with your Apple Watch? My daughter and I are currently having the same type of problem with ours that we just purchased. We have tried everything that was recommended to you and still no luck.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean with "the update".

But everything is updated to most recent OS version, and still didn't worked. The only thing that worked was setting the iPhone as new phone, not restore backup.

If you want to try it, you can backup your phone (I recommend setting an encrypted backup, with a password, so in case you wanna restore it everything will get back as ever before), then restore it and set it as new phone. Wipe out the WATCH (go to preferences, general, etc) and then go to the Watch App and set it up again. In my case it asked me to enable dictation, which it never asked before! (it didnt worked BTW, as I speak spanish and it only worked in english... but as I said, it seems that the app didnt set it up right).

Please, take into account that it is important that your are connected to a 2.4Ghz Wifi, as Watch can only connect to that band... it cannot connect to 5.8Ghz (I don't understand why... must be some technical reason I would like to think...).

If you need any help, please don't hesitate to ask. I'll be glad to help!

Best.

So helpful!! thank you - the Lookout Security app on my iPhone 6 was preventing my Apple Watch 1 from detecting home wifi

I had tried all the solutions posted - turning off the watch ,forgetting the wifi networks , turning off Bluetooth on the iPhone , connecting to 2.4 GHz network, enabling bluetooth then turning watch back on - multiple times to no avail. I also tried unpairing and pairing and a clean install on the watch without success.

As soon as I deleted Lookout app on the iPhone then followed the procedure - the wifi worked an Apple Watch !

Thanks again for this solution

An added suggestion to those still struggling with this issue - I just got a new Apple Watch Series 3, struggled for hours on my own and with Apple Support to connect it to Wi-Fi to no avail. I finally took another look at my router settings (I'm using the Netgear Orbi system), and noticed my 2.4GHz connection channel was set to "Auto" (default). Changed the setting to a specific channel (I selected Channel 1), and my watch connected immediately - problem solved. I'm assuming the issue all along was interference on the 2.4GHz channel my router was auto-selecting.

None of my other devices (including my phone) were having problems with the connection, so odd that the watch wasn't able to connect. Perhaps the watch is especially sensitive to interference. Resolution was passed back to the Apple Support supervisor to share with the engineers.

Its is not about the router... My connects to every wifi without a problem... After wiping out iPhone and watch and setting them as new... No restore.

Maybe you can connect to your router after playing with some setting... But it will not connect to other routers maybe.

In my case, it was - but not suggesting it's root cause for everyone's issue. I tried this after plugging in an old Apple Time Capsule router, which connected flawlessly - so definitely router / signal related as nothing else changed. There are 11 different 2.4GHz channels, and I have a cordless phone system that was likely causing interference on the channel my Orbi router auto-selected - locking it to a single channel did the trick. I wouldn't have expected the Watch to be more sensitive to interference than my iPhone, but that seems to be the case. Issue could come back up in other "noisy" environments, so Apple needs to address it.

In my case, I've the same issue, nothing wifi connexions, icon wifi in my nike Watch series 3...

I do all of the solutions in this post, but nothing, no wifi connections in my watch...

But, I remember that: In my router wifi TpLink, I have an access control, with whitelist filtering with MAC address.

I go into my router wifi TPlink, put the watch MAC address (I see in general/info watch preferences. Note that they are two MAC address, one tu bluetooth and other call MAC address for the wifi connect, the second is the right MAC address.) and "voilà" now the Apple watch connect to my wifi 2,4 Ghz channel!!!! and the icon wifi looks fine in the screen in a beautiful blue intense 😁

I write this, because perhaps anybody has the same security preferences in the router wifi, and the Apple watch hasn't any preferences panne for the wifi, because this connexion runs twice in the iPhone... but the security preferences router wifi, need's to know who is in his domains, because it isn't know (MAC address machine) he don't give permissions to connect in his domain wifi (sorry for my bad english 😊)

Thanks in advance to the other people write his issue and solution how.

Best wishes!!

I’ve had the same problem!

I’ve got an Apple Watch series 3 GPS + Cellular and an iPhone 7 Plus and it’s just not connecting to WiFi.

Tried absolutely everything that it says online to do, reset, unpair etc but nothing worked, contacted Apple support they had no clue, got second Apple Watch but the Apple Watch still didn’t connect to WiFi.

Just before I threw it out of the window, I read this forum and saw the bit about the LOOKOUT SECURITY APP. So I tried this method, deleted the app, forgot the WiFi network, turned both devices off, set it all up again and it worked !!! Thank god

So it’s the LOOKOUT SECURITY APP, that’s the problem, if you have it on your devices delete now!

Will update my Apple support contact aswell

Thankyou to this forum for restoring my faith !! 😁

Thankyou chaoswith!

Tried everything possible to try get my Apple Watch to connect to wifi, on my second watch and every method has been tried at least twice !

Even Apple support didn’t no what was going on!

Read your post about the lookout app, deleted the app and rebooted and so on, and it now works!

You have saved my Apple Watch!

Thankyou !!!

Hello,

I have this problem too. I have apple watch series 3, iPhone 6s plus. What i think is the problem, I have dual-band AP sharing one SSID(on both 2,4GHz and 5GHz radio). My watch is not trying to connect to Wifi. I suspect that my iPhone is connected to 5GHz radio and apple watch does not know that it can connect to this network? How could I tell the watch that it can connect to 2,4GHz radio? Or what may be the cause?

Thanks in advance,

Stanislav

Hello,

So, I have confirmed my suspection to be the cause.

1)First I have temporarily turned off 5GHz radio on my AP.

2)Now I have removed wifi from my iPhone's settings, and connected again.

3)After the info has transferred to my watch, now it does connect to my wifi network.

Wow. Thank you so much. I had almost given up and returned the watch. I deleted the Lookout app and everything looks fine now. I called apple support 6 times and they just kept repeating the obvious steps...Also, it looks silly to me that Apple would allow third-party apps to interfere with such an important aspect of their product...

That's awesome! Thanks, Chaoswith.

I have had this problem off and on with both mine and my girlfriend's Apple Watch Series 3. I just tried something new and I told my iPhone to forget my WiFi network, then re-joined it on the iPhone and now it works on my Apple Watch just fine again. Hope this helps.

Thanks! I've just confirmed the same on my Apple Watch Series 3 (watchOS 4.3) and resolved the issue:

1. Forget WiFi network on iPhone and rejoin.

2. Turn on Airplane mode on iPhone and confirm WiFi connection on Apple Watch (may need to attempt this step multiple times).