Other How do I get my new phone to work with my watch?

[lwilliams]

I have not replaced my phone since getting the Apple Watch with cellular.

So, when I move to the new phone on Friday, how do I move the watch from the old to the new?

 

[adamhenry]

I backed up my phone to my Mac. I then unpaired the watch. I restored the new phone from the backup and paired the watch to the new phone. If you use an encrypted back up for the phone, it will restore your health info.

 

[lwilliams]

Do you think that is better than the phone cloud backup for this purpose?

 

[iphone1105]

Just use phone to phone transfer. It will ask you to pair your watch. Easy peasy.

 

[adamhenry]

Do you think that is better than the phone cloud backup for this purpose?

Due to covid, Apple didn't allow me to do the setup in store. I took my Macbook and did the setup in the parking lot. It is also much faster than restoring from icloud over wifi.

 

[lwilliams]

Really, it's that easy??? That will be great.

 

[Robbosan]

Just use phone to phone transfer. It will ask you to pair your watch. Easy peasy.

This

 

[lexikon318]

I agree on the phone to phone transfer. This was my first time doing it and it was amazing.

During the course of setting up the new phone, you will be asked if you want to pair it with your watch. Very convenient and easy.

 

[lwilliams]

Will receiving a call during the transfer interrupt things?

 

[Platzerwasel]

If you're doing phone-to-phone transfer do you have to unpair the watch from the old phone first?

 

[Apple_Robert]

If you're doing phone-to-phone transfer do you have to unpair the watch from the old phone first?

You shouldn’t have to. It should ask you if you want to pair with the new phone.

 

[SisterBlue22]

If you're doing phone-to-phone transfer do you have to unpair the watch from the old phone first?

Nope, it knows what to do.

 

[risenphoenixkai]

If you're doing phone-to-phone transfer do you have to unpair the watch from the old phone first?

Nope. I had two Watches paired to my old phone (Series 6 and Series 0), and both paired with the new iPhone just fine when doing phone-to-phone transfer.

 

[SisterBlue22]

Nope, it knows what to do.

I'm quoting myself because this year, my phone did not know what to do, LOL. I ended up having to unpair the watch with my 11PM and re-pair it manually with the 12PM. Just a small hiccup, and it all turned out ok.

 

[tekchic]

This was the first time since owning Apple Watch that I did a full phone setup as new. Prior to that I always did iTunes backup/restore because I was worried about losing activity/fitness data.

This time I did iCloud backup first (no more iTunes backups yay). Made sure health data was going to iCloud.

Setup phone as new, let iCloud stuff come back down (for Notes/Messages/Health, etc).

Unpaired watch from old phone, paired to new phone. Downside is that I lost 5 hours of stands and about 80 active calories of burn, so I had to stay up extra late getting stands haha... not sure why the backup wasn't more recent than the 5 hours but it did get my yoga workout from earlier that morning at least.