Xcode 16.4 seems to not support the latest watchOS, rather just up to watchOS 9.

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Xcode 16.4 seems to not support the latest watchOS, rather just up to watchOS 9.

Hello. I'm a beginner developer in Xcode and Swift and I'm trying to build an app for iOS and watchOS. However, when I tried to push an app into my Apple Watch SE (2nd gen) with watchOS 11.6, it said that the OS was lower than the deployment target. With some further snooping i found out that Xcode didn't recognize the OS at all, just that it was a Apple Watch. So I went digging into the Xcodes files containing the supported watchOS versions and found that it only supported watchOS 7 to 9.4.

What gives and how can i resolve this matter?

Posted on Sep 11, 2025 09:34 AM

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Answer 1

Mac Jim ID

Level 9

53,924 points

Sep 11, 2025 03:25 PM in response to BeadDev

What do you have listed for your Deployment Target? Xcode 16.4 does support WatchOS 11.6.

The watchOS 11.5 SDK provides support to develop watchOS apps for Apple Watch devices running watchOS 11.6. The SDK comes bundled with Xcode 16.4, available from the Mac App Store.

watchOS 11.6 Release Notes | Apple Developer Documentation

Make sure you have Developer Mode turned on for the Watch. Not unusual for Watch deployment to fail with connectivity issues since it is not possible to have a wired connection, so make sure you are not using a VPN on your Mac and try restarting all devices.

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