I had a similar issue trying to pair my Apple Watch 1st gen (Series 0) with my iPhone SE 1st gen. Every time the process reached “Activating Apple Watch,” the Watch app would either crash or suddenly show “Unpairing Apple Watch.” I tried resetting both devices multiple times in different ways, but nothing worked — until I stumbled upon this workaround:
Start clean with your Apple Watch fully erased, and make sure it’s no longer linked to any Apple ID.
- Start the pairing process normally, with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled (but no mobile data).
- A few seconds later, when the screen says “Connecting to Apple Watch” — and before it reaches “Activating Apple Watch” (the point where it always failed for me) — turn off Wi-Fi. Make sure mobile data is also off.
- Somehow, this causes the activation step to be skipped entirely, and it jumps straight to the Terms & Conditions screen.
- After accepting, continue the setup and choose “Set up later” or “Don’t activate” for anything optional. You can enable those features afterward — this just keeps the initial process clean.
- If syncing begins, at some point the app will ask you to reconnect to the internet. At that moment, turn Wi-Fi or mobile data back on and let the process continue.
(In my case, I noticed it sometimes stalled during syncing, so I toggled Wi-Fi off and on again just in case — though I’m not sure that step was necessary.)
After that, the sync completed and my Apple Watch was successfully paired. I was later able to activate everything else and link it to iCloud without any issues.
It seems like disabling Wi-Fi at the right moment bypasses whatever server check was causing the crash. I can’t guarantee it’ll work for everyone, but it might be worth trying if you’re stuck at the same point.
Let me know if it helps!
P.S. Unfortunately, Apple’s support team was very kind but ultimately unable to help me. They didn’t explore alternative solutions like the one I ended up discovering myself. Instead, they referred me to an “authorized service provider” who wanted to charge a hefty fee just to diagnose the issue and “see what they could do.” Honestly, quite disappointing from Apple — I had to figure it out on my own.
