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Smanske

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 6, 2025
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Unpairing an old watch from an iPhone when both are connected to a car as digital key fobs will prevent you from establishing a cellular connection with a new iwatch as the iPhone will not let you break the digital connection between the car and the iPhone and the iwatch. The digital connection between the car and the iPhone and iwatch can only be deleted via the car s operating system. Neither Apple nor Verizon have a work around.
 
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Unpairing an old watch from an iPhone when both are connected to a car as digital key fobs will prevent you from establishing a cellular connection with a new iwatch as the iPhone will not let you break the digital connection between the car and the iPhone and the iwatch. The digital connection between the car and the iPhone and iwatch can only be deleted via the car s operating system. Neither Apple nor Verizon have a work around.
Have you tried factory reset of your car? :)
 
Unpairing an old watch from an iPhone when both are connected to a car as digital key fobs will prevent you from establishing a cellular connection with a new iwatch as the iPhone will not let you break the digital connection between the car and the iPhone and the iwatch. The digital connection between the car and the iPhone and iwatch can only be deleted via the car s operating system. Neither Apple nor Verizon have a work around.
Contact the car manufacturer, who is that anyways? Also models and OS versions will help. Also, assuming your car came with a manual describing steps how to connect a phone/watch, same manual should have the reverse
 
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Have you tried factory reset of your car? :)
The only option is to remove the iPhone as the digital key which does not solve the issue. It appears the sole solution is to have the cell phone carrier remove the old iWatch device from your mobile account and reestablish the new iWatch as a new device with a new phone number for the new iWatch. Apple has failed miserably not instructing their customers to remove their iPhone as a digital key fob from the car before unpairing the old iWatch from the phone and resetting it to wipe out all of the existing content of the old iWatch before setting up the new iWatch. Good news is they’re probably less than 1% of car buyers that even understand how to set up their iPhone and iWatch has digital key fobs!
 
As jz0309 asked, which car model and manufacturer? Your assumption that every vehicle that supports a digital key interoperates with the phone and watch in exactly the same way is likely wrong.

In fact on many vehicles you can pair a watch that doesn't even have cellular capability, all that is needed is NFC.

And for heavens sake, and as bricktop_at already pointed out, it's an Apple Watch, not an iWatch.
 
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As jz0309 asked, which car model and manufacturer? Your assumption that every vehicle that supports a digital key interoperates with the phone and watch in exactly the same way is likely wrong.

In fact on many vehicles you can pair a watch that doesn't even have cellular capability, all that is needed is NFC.

And for heavens sake, and as bricktop_at already pointed out, it's an Apple Watch, not an iWatch.
Exactly. My wife and I have Teslas (2018 and 2024) - no cellular is needed (while cellular CAN be used via the app to do things, has nothing to do with the key portion - which is all NFC / bluetooth).

But that's Tesla - I can't imagine a car having a "digital key" that's tied to a cellular IMEI.... <shrug>
 
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The only option is to remove the iPhone as the digital key which does not solve the issue. It appears the sole solution is to have the cell phone carrier remove the old iWatch device from your mobile account and reestablish the new iWatch as a new device with a new phone number for the new iWatch. Apple has failed miserably not instructing their customers to remove their iPhone as a digital key fob from the car before unpairing the old iWatch from the phone and resetting it to wipe out all of the existing content of the old iWatch before setting up the new iWatch. Good news is they’re probably less than 1% of car buyers that even understand how to set up their iPhone and iWatch has digital key fobs!
Nonsense, tell us your car manufacturer/model - it is THEIR implementation.
 
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