Unable to pair child's SE watch to my iPhone 16 pro

Question

Level 1

4 points

Unable to pair child's SE watch to my iPhone 16 pro

Anyone else stuck in this frustrating setup loop trying to pair their child's (SE, cellular) watch to parent phone (16 Pro)?

Here's what I've done so far:

created new apple ID for child
both watch and phone software are current
able to get through initial set up (wrist preference, connecting to watch, Terms & Cons...choose family member, enter his apple ID pw...)
always get stuck at "signing in..." and the "continue setup on apple watch"
error message on watch: "Couldn't sync iCloud Data" (image attached)
have unpaired, reset, done it all, no success
spent 3 hours on apple support (chat and phone) and have a case #
brought watch to local Apple store and they sent it out for service - nothing wrong with watch
was told by store manager "it's a problem we've been seeing with some parents trying to pair their kids' watches... our software engineers are working on it...just keep checking for updates...usually takes about a week" (this was on 01/05/2025 - I began this set up process on 12/25/2024)
have tried all the suggestions mentioned on the community suggestions including pairing it for myself (worked fine) and unpairing and reseting to pair for my son (same error loop)
watch is not associated with either of our AppleIDs
daughter has older Apple Watch and has been paired successfully to my phone for years
neither child has a phone and won't be getting one any time soon
ironic that I hoped this Apple Watch could replace his Verizon Gizmo - can't go back to gizmo because I ported its # to this non-working Apple Watch

Posted on Jan 11, 2025 10:05 AM

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Answer 1

brbo

Level 8

36,347 points

Jan 12, 2025 6:35 PM in response to claud9

Hi claud9,

welcome to the Apple (user-to-user) Community

Re: Unable to pair child's SE watch to my iPhone 16 pro

Commiserations! You have been through a lot already!

Am no expert in this area, yet your carefully prepared post deserves some response..:

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Re: spent 3 hours on apple support (chat and phone) and have a case #

You can sign in to get up to date information on your tech support case.

My Support - Official Apple Support

Suggestions below are Apple Support's current online articles, which you may or may not have used already

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Re: watch is not associated with either of our AppleIDs

Eg: Set up Apple Watch for a family member - Apple Support (The article gives the set-up steps to follow:)

says:

What you need

An Apple Watch Series 4 or later with cellular,* or Apple Watch SE with cellular, with watchOS 7 or later.
An iPhone 6s or later with iOS 14 or later for the initial watch setup process. Find out more about Apple Watch and iPhone compatibility.
An Apple Account for yourself and one for the family member who will use the Apple Watch. Your Apple Account needs to have two-factor authentication turned on.
A Family Sharing group that includes the person who will use the Apple Watch. You’ll need to have the role of organiser or parent/guardian to set up an Apple Watch for a family member.

* A mobile plan isn’t required to set up an Apple Watch for a family member, but is necessary for some features.

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Re: " ... daughter has older Apple Watch and has been paired successfully to my phone for years"

Maybe there's a tip in this article ?

How to: Set up more than one Apple Watch - Apple Support

or

This earlier article, which has been archived and is no longer updated by Apple.

Use more than one Apple Watch with your iPhone - Apple Suppor

All the best :-)

Reply

Answer 2

Jan 18, 2025 6:32 AM in response to claud9

I've been having this same issue for a long while now with no resolution. The only thing I've seen suggested that has worked for some, but not you, is creating a new iCloud account. This is not a good solution for us as there are other devices and backups and photos etc tied to my son's existing account. That's a bad solution. Incredibly frustrating and a huge waste of time.

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