Apple watch keeps asking for passcode

ProdigyofPeace wrote:

I have tattoos on my left wrist, switched arms and it worked. Crazy.

No it is simple physics, subcutaneous ink blocks light. Apple designed them for all the range of human skin tones, not blue or green.

Wearing the Apple Watch on my less tattooed arm solved the issue — but now the band covers a small, deeply meaningful tattoo on the underside of my wrist 😣

Please, Apple, fix this! I’d really love to wear the Watch on my tattooed arm, especially for sleep tracking.

The heart rate sensor actually works fine during the day and workouts, even on the tattooed area — the issue is just that the Watch thinks it’s not being worn.

It’s a minor bug, but it has a big impact. Hope there’s a way to improve wrist detection for those of us with ink.

If you go to the Watch app, then head over to "Passcode", do you have "Wrist Detection" on?

Navigate to Passcode, check wrist detection. Even if it’s on, turn it off and wait a few seconds, then turn it back on. This will reset the preference.

I have tattoos, switched to my less tattooed wrist....it works...

Try powering the Apple Watch down and powering it back on again. To do this, press and hold the side button, then tap the power button the top right, then slide to power it off. To turn it back on, press and hold the side button till you see the Apple logo.

Had the same issue when my apple watch updated to 11.1, as have a number of my co-workers. The issue is that the apple watch is paired with an iOS device that requires a complex password (special character or letter) and the watch does not support that. You get stuck in a perpetual "enter new password" loop, and there is nothing you can do. Hopefully Apple comes out with a fix for a complex password and not just a numeric one.

Same problem with my apple watch 7(updated to 11.3). Originally the pass code for my apple watch and iPhone were the same and even with Wrist Detection ON the pass code screen was always coming up.

I changed the pass code on my apple watch to something different than my iPhone and it has stopped asking for a pass code and functions exactly as it should. And it's also a better security practice from what I understand.

nickschick wrote:

Me too!! I have tried using the keyboard on iPhone option to enter and even though I know I am 100% definitely entering to correct password it says it’s wrong.

The option to enter on the watch itself doesn’t work as when I try to write 1 it always puts an l

come on Apple get this fixed please!!

If you are being asked to enter a password using scribble then this is NOT the watch passcode, it probably relates to a third party app or complication that is no longer supported by OS11. Find and remove the app.

If you go to iphone, settings, notifications, turn on Apple Watch Keyboard, then any complex passwords can be entered using the iphine keyboard, butbit should nit happen very often.

Do you have tattoos on your wrist?

This was it. Unfortunately im tattooed on both arms and pretty much everywhere else, but testing on people without ink it works.🤓

Oh, well. I’d recommend contacting apple support as there is much we can do from our end. It could be a hardware defect or software glitch. The other thing you could do prior to taking it in, is to reset the watch and repair it to your iPhone.

If wrist detection is on, then the Watch shouldn't ask for a password unless it is taken off. Since it will know when it is on your wrist. If you're still having the issue, make sure you updated to watchOS 11.2 as that is newest version of watchOS. If the issue still persist, I'd take your Watch into a Apple Store to get checked.

Yes I’ve been testing this and am seeing a similar issue with my Series 10.

From my testing, 99% of the time it’s right after I’ve taken the watch off the charging cable and placed it back on my wrist.

I enter my PIN which unlocks the watch, rotate my wrist back to a resting position and when I rotate it back to look at the watch face it’s locked again. This will happen over and over, sometimes up to 10 times and then all of a sudden it’s happy and works fine.

It remains connected all night long and into the next day, until I come to charge it again and then I hit the “PIN loop”

Watch is on my left wrist which does have a tattoo under it, but as I’ve stated it works fine unless I’ve just removed it from charging.

I’d recommend updating to that version as it fixes a lot of issues. It’s worth a try.