Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apps Question setting up Apple Watch on new iPhone.

LFC2020

LFC2020

macrumors P6
Original poster
Apr 4, 2020
16,874
38,040
Getting my iPhone 12 tomorrow, I’ll be restoring it from a backup on my mac.

Once I’ve finished restoring my iPhone 12 do I unpair my watch on my old phone, or do I just erase content and settings on the old phone?

If I unpair the watch on my old phone before erasing all content and settings, won’t that restore my Apple Watch?
 
matrix07 said:
I would have guessed Unpair the watch (so we have it’s backup on old phone) > Back up old phone on a Mac (encrypted) > Setup new phone using that back up.
Click to expand...

Back up done on my mac, now hopefully my new phone arrives tomorrow, will unpair the watch on my old phone once new phone arrives 😁
 
  • Like
Reactions: DotCom2 and matrix07
Beards said:
I could have sworn you first unpair which creates the backup on your old iPhone.
You then back up the old iPhone (which includes the data from your unpaired watch).
Finally, set up the new iPhone and pair the watch which gathers the backed up watch data.
Click to expand...
Yep that’s my understanding. You have to unpair your watch firs so that it creates an update back up of the watch on yiur phone. Then you pair it to your new phone
 
  • Like
Reactions: DotCom2 and LFC2020
Bazooka-joe said:
Yep that’s my understanding. You have to unpair your watch firs so that it creates an update back up of the watch on yiur phone. Then you pair it to your new phone
Click to expand...
Exactly, but if one just want to start anew then an unpairing first is no need.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DotCom2
Bazooka-joe said:
Yep that’s my understanding. You have to unpair your watch firs so that it creates an update back up of the watch on yiur phone. Then you pair it to your new phone
Click to expand...

You do not need to unpair your watch if you are using an encrypted backup to Mac. The Mac encrypted backup copies the health data. Simply restore to your new phone and you'll be promoted to pair. No unpairing is necessary, unless you are using the unencrypted backup option.

Tim
 
you don't need to do any of this, you're making it complicated, Apple has taken care of it for you

when you get your new phone, once you power it on, as some point it will ask you about transferring from an old phone.
You then hold your new phone close to the old one, click a couple confirmations, and it transfers everything by itself.
The watch transfers to the new phone automatically as part of the process. Although I think it does ask before it does it.

It's pretty seamless,
mine took about 15 minutes to transfer everything, then the new phone was usable, but it had to re-download all the apps, it took a while, but you can long press, and "prioritize download" and get to apps you need sooner.

the watch did reboot, and had a progress bar for a while,

within 30 minutes I was fully transferred to the new phone, with the old watch, nothing more than clicking "OK" a few times.

you do have to reauthorize Apple Pay cards,
 
  • Like
Reactions: matrix07, Thoradin, arefbe and 3 others
waw74 said:
you don't need to do any of this, you're making it complicated, Apple has taken care of it for you

when you get your new phone, once you power it on, as some point it will ask you about transferring from an old phone.
You then hold your new phone close to the old one, click a couple confirmations, and it transfers everything by itself.
The watch transfers to the new phone automatically as part of the process. Although I think it does ask before it does it.

It's pretty seamless,
mine took about 15 minutes to transfer everything, then the new phone was usable, but it had to re-download all the apps, it took a while, but you can long press, and "prioritize download" and get to apps you need sooner.

the watch did reboot, and had a progress bar for a while,

within 30 minutes I was fully transferred to the new phone, with the old watch, nothing more than clicking "OK" a few times.

you do have to reauthorize Apple Pay cards,
Click to expand...
this I remember from either setting up my X or my 11ProMax, can't remember. My preferred method is still to do a backup onto my iMac and then restore the new phone from that backup. I do not recall ever un-pairing my watch and it's also not mentioned in the apple doc I posted above
 
  • Like
Reactions: LFC2020
Not using a encrypted backup, just a normal backup, soooooo do I unpair, leave it paired, don’t pair, 🤔 I’m confused now 😂.
 
So following apples documents, when you prepare your old phone for selling, don’t you have to unpair the watch from that as well otherwise it will be paired to two phones
 
Bazooka-joe said:
So following apples documents, when you prepare your old phone for selling, don’t you have to unpair the watch from that as well otherwise it will be paired to two phones
Click to expand...
resetting your phone will erase your pairing as well ... I do not believe that the watch keeps track of paired phones, at least there's no setting on the watch itself that tells you which phone it's paired to, at least not that I can find ...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bazooka-joe
I'm going to setup both my new iPhone and Apple Watch 4 as new. Even though it's a bit more work, I just think cleaning every out is much better. I use iCloud for everything so that makes it sooooo much easier than in years ago. I don't erase my old phone until the new one is all setup and I use the old phone as a reference in case I forgot some of my preferred settings.
Just my OCD working here. :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: tdbrown75
jz0309 said:
so, did you get your new phone? how did you set it up/paired the watch?
Click to expand...
Transferred data over from phone to phone, everything went smoothly except Apple Watch didn't get transferred over to new phone lol.
 
  • Sad
Reactions: jz0309
LFC2020 said:
Transferred data over from phone to phone, everything went smoothly except Apple Watch didn't get transferred over to new phone lol.
Click to expand...
So, during this process it did not prompt you to pair the watch? Pairing should be retired as the watch is a new device for the phone, eg new Bluetooth address etc
 
jz0309 said:
So, during this process it did not prompt you to pair the watch? Pairing should be retired as the watch is a new device for the phone, eg new Bluetooth address etc
Click to expand...

Nope just transferred all my data from my old phone, didn’t ask me if I wanted to bring over my Apple Watch. 🥺
 
  • Sad
Reactions: jz0309
waw74 said:
you don't need to do any of this, you're making it complicated, Apple has taken care of it for you

when you get your new phone, once you power it on, as some point it will ask you about transferring from an old phone.
You then hold your new phone close to the old one, click a couple confirmations, and it transfers everything by itself.
The watch transfers to the new phone automatically as part of the process. Although I think it does ask before it does it.

It's pretty seamless,
mine took about 15 minutes to transfer everything, then the new phone was usable, but it had to re-download all the apps, it took a while, but you can long press, and "prioritize download" and get to apps you need sooner.

the watch did reboot, and had a progress bar for a while,

within 30 minutes I was fully transferred to the new phone, with the old watch, nothing more than clicking "OK" a few times.

you do have to reauthorize Apple Pay cards,
Click to expand...
This is exactly how I transferred my cellular S5 when my 12 Pro arrived on Friday.
The transfer went ridiculously smoothly, one of the phones asked if I wanted to transfer my watch over, I clicked yes and everything was done for me in no time.
This is what you pay your money for with Apple in my mind, there is no messing about any longer, just some crazy behind the scenes hocus pocus and ‘it just works’ exactly like it did with your old phone.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jz0309
Thoradin said:
This is exactly how I transferred my cellular S5 when my 12 Pro arrived on Friday.
The transfer went ridiculously smoothly, one of the phones asked if I wanted to transfer my watch over, I clicked yes and everything was done for me in no time.
This is what you pay your money for with Apple in my mind, there is no messing about any longer, just some crazy behind the scenes hocus pocus and ‘it just works’ exactly like it did with your old phone.
Click to expand...
good for you, but, OP used the same method and was not prompted to pair the watch to the new phone ...
 
  • Like
Reactions: LFC2020
jz0309 said:
good for you, but, OP used the same method and was not prompted to pair the watch to the new phone ...
Click to expand...
Whoops, must have skipped over those last posts without properly reading.

@LFC2020 have you tried powering off both the new iPhone and the watch? I did read a post somewhere that described a similar situation and a reboot of both devices then brought up the prompt to move the watch over.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back