Apple Watch Troubleshooting

Oh no! An accidental bump has left your watch with broken or shattered glass.

Take a deep breath and see if your Apple Watch will turn on and operate normally. In most cases, it is still functional but now a cosmetic disaster. Unfortunately, the Apple Watch screen glass and display are fused together and must be replaced as one piece.

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Instructions for replacing the screen can be found here.

Even after furious button mashing and screen smashing, your watch doesn't respond.

Sometimes all it takes is a restart for the watch to become responsive again. To restart your watch when it is unresponsive, press and hold the side button down until the Apple logo appears (~10 seconds).

If a normal restart doesn’t do the job, don’t despair. To force-restart your watch when it is unresponsive, press and hold the side button and the digital crown until the Apple logo appears (~10 seconds).

Placing your Apple Watch on the charger does not bring it to life.

Check the charging cable for damage and dirt (including on the charging pad). Try plugging your watch’s charge cable into a wall outlet, rather than your laptop’s USB port, as this will provide greater power input.

Try using different cables, chargers and wall outlets to make sure none of them has a malfunction.

Leave the watch on the charger for at least one hour to see if the watch begins to charge. With a completely depleted battery, it might take some time before the watch comes to life again.

If the watch still isn’t responding as expected, try to restart it or even force-restart it (see above for instructions).

As a last resort, you can let the battery run down until the watch completely shuts off on its own, and then leave it off for another day for the battery to deplete completely (yeah, it’s difficult—a whole day without your Apple Watch). Then try charging it again the next day.

You cannot get your beloved Apple Watch to turn on.

Place your watch onto the charger and connect it to your computer or wall outlet to charge. If the watch does not charge when placed on the charger, it likely has a dead battery or a bad charger. Check the steps above in “Apple Watch will not charge” first. Try replacing the battery with a partially charged one and see if the watch will turn on. If the watch does turn on or the charging indicator comes on, then the old battery was the problem. If the watch won’t turn on or show any charging indication, there may be a side button or logic board issue.

If the side button doesn't seem to work, place the watch onto the charger and connect it to a wall outlet or a computer and let it charge. If the watch turns on and has power, then there might be a problem with the side button.

It’s possible that the watch appears turned off because the display is bad. If the Apple Watch sounds like it’s working properly but nothing is visible, it’s possible the display is faulty and must be replaced. An easy way to test this is to ping the watch from your iPhone and wait for a sound or vibration. If it vibrates or you hear a sound but nothing displays on the screen, then the screen is most likely the problem. Try replacing it.

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Instructions for replacing the screen can be found here.

Following a screen replacement, ApplePay or NFC features stop working.

As a security feature, the NFC chip is linked to your watch during setup. If the original screen is replaced, damaged, or disconnected, NFC features will cease to function.

Make sure to deactivate any NFC-related functions and delete all your Apple Pay account info before replacing the screen. If necessary, put the old screen back on, turn on the watch, and remove your Apple Pay settings via your iPhone. Then go ahead and replace the screen with the new one, and set up Apple Pay again.