Contacts & Photos won’t sync to Apple Watch

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Level 1

8 points

Contacts & Photos won’t sync to Apple Watch

Hi all - I got an Apple Watch (series 1) for Christmas. I have an iPhone 7, both the phone and the watch have the latest software updates. The watch receives texts and calls, but none of my contacts or pictures will load onto the watch.

My contacts and photos are synced to iCloud, and work fine on both my MacBook and iPad. I’ve gone through everything I can find in the forums - reset sync data, turned off iCloud contacts on my phone & restarted both the phone and the watch, unpaired the watch and set it up as a new one several times, and have called Apple support only to never hear back after two lengthy phone calls that were escalated to senior engineers.

Totally at a loss, and really hoping one of you might know the answer!

Posted on Jan 5, 2018 2:33 PM

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Answer 1

D.G.80 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 6, 2018 10:23 AM in response to Jonathan UK

One more update - I unpaired the watch and repaired it to my husbands phone, also an iPhone 7 but with a different Apple ID and password. All the contacts and photos immediately loaded fine. So somehow it is my phone??

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Answer 2

D.G.80 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 6, 2018 9:23 AM in response to Jonathan UK

Thanks so much for the reply, Jonathan! I’ve seen you replying on so many other threads so was hoping you might be able to help.

Unfortunately I’ve tried all the steps you outlined. I was on with tier 2 Apple support for an hour and a half last night, and we also tried deleting the Apple Watch app on my phone and then restarting both, unpairing and pairing again, and letting them charge right next to each other for 6+ hours last night. No luck.

Any other thoughts?? The logic last night was that the issue might be my phone, not the watch.

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Answer 3

Jonathan UK

Level 10

165,465 points

Jan 6, 2018 9:14 AM in response to D.G.80

Hi

The following steps may help:

On your iPhone, in the Contacts app, check that there is a single contact card for each of your contacts and that each card contains that contact's full name and phone number, along with their email address.

If you have contacts from multiple sources and multiple entries for the same person have not been linked automatically (such that they are shown as a unified contact, with "Unified Info"), then manually link those contacts by following the instructions here:

Hide duplicate contacts

If you have not yet done so, re-enable iCloud Contacts:

On your iPhone, tap Settings > [your name] > iCloud > enable Contacts.

Delete prior Messages conversations with the affected contacts on each device:

Messages conversations need to be deleted separately on your iPhone and Apple Watch.
On each device, to delete a conversation: when viewing the list of conversations in Messages, swipe left on a conversation and confirm to delete it.

Having made any changes in the Contacts app, on your iPhone, in the Watch app, go to: My Watch > General > Reset > tap on Reset Sync Data again.

Nothing will seem to happen, but the process will run in the background / invisibly to you, so allow some time afterwards for it to complete.

If the issue persists, then it may then help to restart both your iPhone and your Apple Watch again, turning both off together, then restarting your iPhone first:

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