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Watch mysteriously blank each day

meeebee

meeebee

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 23, 2016
106
39
Wanted to see if others have experienced this issue with blank unresponsive watch display.

Each day over the past several weeks, I've noticed that my watch doesn't turn on each morning. About a month ago, I added a Shortcut to change the watch face when I go into DND, which is kicked on during my sleep period. What I noticed was that the watch stayed blank all night, but would return to the normal face in the morning when my scheduled DND period was over. Over the last week however the watch stays blank for several hours in the morning, and magically comes back on its own several hours later.

When it's blank, I cannot do anything with the watch. The buttons don't turn anything on. It doesn't even respond to a hard reset. However the iphone still shows it as connected on the widget, and shows the fully charged status.

To troubleshoot, I've tried several things that have not fixed it:
* when the face came back I hard reset it,
* I unpaired the watch and restored from backup
* I unpaired the watch and set as a new watch
* I deleted the DND and sleep schedules on the watch
* I hard reset my phone
* I've changed the setting back and forth for "Always On" and also the Brightness settings.
* I've changed watch faces from the iphone
* I've set the configuration to "Don't use this Watch for Sleep" and "Track Sleep with Apple Watch"
* Disabled all shortcuts

I'm stumped. Has anyone else seen this issue and can provide guidance?

Configuration:
Apple Watch S6, Model A2292, 25G RAM available, WatchOS 9.2, 100% charged
iPhone 12, iOS 16.2
 
meeebee said:
Wanted to see if others have experienced this issue with blank unresponsive watch display.

Each day over the past several weeks, I've noticed that my watch doesn't turn on each morning. About a month ago, I added a Shortcut to change the watch face when I go into DND, which is kicked on during my sleep period. What I noticed was that the watch stayed blank all night, but would return to the normal face in the morning when my scheduled DND period was over. Over the last week however the watch stays blank for several hours in the morning, and magically comes back on its own several hours later.

When it's blank, I cannot do anything with the watch. The buttons don't turn anything on. It doesn't even respond to a hard reset. However the iphone still shows it as connected on the widget, and shows the fully charged status.

To troubleshoot, I've tried several things that have not fixed it:
* when the face came back I hard reset it,
* I unpaired the watch and restored from backup
* I unpaired the watch and set as a new watch
* I deleted the DND and sleep schedules on the watch
* I hard reset my phone
* I've changed the setting back and forth for "Always On" and also the Brightness settings.
* I've changed watch faces from the iphone
* I've set the configuration to "Don't use this Watch for Sleep" and "Track Sleep with Apple Watch"
* Disabled all shortcuts

I'm stumped. Has anyone else seen this issue and can provide guidance?

Configuration:
Apple Watch S6, Model A2292, 25G RAM available, WatchOS 9.2, 100% charged
iPhone 12, iOS 16.2
Click to expand...
While it sounds like you’ve done this already it’s not clear what exactly you did, so, I’d suggest to un-pair and setup as new and monitor it for a few days without any customization and see how it behaves, and then 1 step at a time.
I’d also contact Apple support
 
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meeebee said:
Wanted to see if others have experienced this issue with blank unresponsive watch display.

Each day over the past several weeks, I've noticed that my watch doesn't turn on each morning. About a month ago, I added a Shortcut to change the watch face when I go into DND, which is kicked on during my sleep period. What I noticed was that the watch stayed blank all night, but would return to the normal face in the morning when my scheduled DND period was over. Over the last week however the watch stays blank for several hours in the morning, and magically comes back on its own several hours later.

When it's blank, I cannot do anything with the watch. The buttons don't turn anything on. It doesn't even respond to a hard reset. However the iphone still shows it as connected on the widget, and shows the fully charged status.

To troubleshoot, I've tried several things that have not fixed it:
* when the face came back I hard reset it,
* I unpaired the watch and restored from backup
* I unpaired the watch and set as a new watch
* I deleted the DND and sleep schedules on the watch
* I hard reset my phone
* I've changed the setting back and forth for "Always On" and also the Brightness settings.
* I've changed watch faces from the iphone
* I've set the configuration to "Don't use this Watch for Sleep" and "Track Sleep with Apple Watch"
* Disabled all shortcuts

I'm stumped. Has anyone else seen this issue and can provide guidance?

Configuration:
Apple Watch S6, Model A2292, 25G RAM available, WatchOS 9.2, 100% charged
iPhone 12, iOS 16.2
Click to expand...

When you're sleeping, you're using DND and not the Sleep focus?
 
kitKAC said:
When you're sleeping, you're using DND and not the Sleep focus?
Click to expand...
Well, yes, I meant Sleep which enacts DND type behavior for me. I took that off for the watch to see if it helped.

Yesterday I did the unpair and set up as new. Worked fine and then in the evening I ran a Shortcut to change the watch face, and that kicked in the Blank display. That might have been the issue, but not sure.

Am unpairing again, setting up as new, and will not run Shortcuts again to see if that was the issue. But cannot re-pair the watch until it comes back from blank.
 
meeebee said:
Well, yes, I meant Sleep which enacts DND type behavior for me. I took that off for the watch to see if it helped.

Yesterday I did the unpair and set up as new. Worked fine and then in the evening I ran a Shortcut to change the watch face, and that kicked in the Blank display. That might have been the issue, but not sure.

Am unpairing again, setting up as new, and will not run Shortcuts again to see if that was the issue. But cannot re-pair the watch until it comes back from blank.
Click to expand...

OK, when the Sleep focus gets activated - part of that is to completely blank out the watch display. All you'll get is basic time and date when you tap the display. Holding down the crown button temporarily wakes the Watch during Sleep focus.
 
kitKAC said:
OK, when the Sleep focus gets activated - part of that is to completely blank out the watch display. All you'll get is basic time and date when you tap the display. Holding down the crown button temporarily wakes the Watch during Sleep focus.
Click to expand...
It stayed blank despite holding down any buttons during Sleep mode.
 
The watch did not come back from blank screen yesterday. This morning when I tried to turn it on, I got the indicator that the battery was low. I then put it on the charger, and it showed that it needed to be charged (yes, there was a working display!). However I let it charge 30 minutes and it now returned to the blank display again. So it tells me that the display does work, but there is something amiss when it returns to "normal" operation.
I've scheduled a meeting with apple genius bar to see if they can provide a fix.
 
Left on charger all morning, and now I'm getting the connect to pair iphone message again. So pairing again as new watch, and will continue to monitor. Also turning all Shortcuts off for now.
 
While it was auto-syncing all apps back to the watch, it went blank again. This time I tried to Reset, which had 3 options. I first Settings, then the middle option (i don't recall what they were) and they erased but still no display. So I tried the Erase All Content and Settings, and I'm back to unpaired and blank screen. So frustrating. Glad I have my Genius bar appointment.
 
Brought to Genius bar. They said they can't help and only option is $300 repair. I still suspect it is something in the configuration, bad watch app, or other software issue. Got the idea to pair to another phone when it decides to come back to life again. The saga continues....
 
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It sounds like a hardware issue to me, considering all the steps you’ve taken and the Genius Bar response. ‘Repair‘ clearly not worth the money they’re going to charge you - new watch time!
 
Yep, I now agree. I paired it to a different phone and it mostly stayed on. As soon as I un-paired it, it went blank again. So, time to either go back to my S3 or upgrade to S8.
 
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