WatchOS 26.0 update and activity will not work or connect

After completing the latest watch update to 26, my activity and fitness apps will not work. The only way to get them to work is completely resetting my watch. This happened with my old watch and to avoid resetting daily, I had to force restart to watch every night before bed. I finally upgraded to an Ultra to avoid this issue; I’ve had my Ultra for almost a year and no issues. Now I do this update two days ago and I’m back to the same issue. What is most frustrating is Apple’s ONLY response is “unpair and repair”. I don’t want to do that every single day. That is not a proper fix. Anyone have any real fixes?

Apple Watch Ultra, watchOS 26

Posted on Sep 20, 2025 6:09 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 11, 2025 11:13 AM

Did you set up the watch as a new device, without using the latest backup, in case the backup data is corrupt, causing this issue?

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

21 replies

Oct 11, 2025 7:48 AM in response to smithc555

I did a full reset on the watch 3 times. Each time the problem came back the next day.


However, the last week I have been shutting my watch off at night, and then putting it on the charger. When I do this, the activity works in the morning. One day I forgot and just put it directly on the charger. The next morning the activity would not load. So I guess I will keep shutting it off at night before charging.

Nov 20, 2025 11:27 AM in response to krene727

I have an apple watch ultra and started having his issue after updating to iOS26 and OS26. I have tried to unpair / pair option, factory reset, etc. Still continues to happen. When the fitness tracker app is frozen, it also causes my Peloton watch app to crash when it is trying to read my heart rate. It seems to eventually sync up after a couple of hours (some days), but its an issue when I try to work out first thing in the morning and can't monitor my heart rate because of this issue. Its pretty frustrating.


One interesting note, if I charge my watch is short spurts (like 30 min or so at a time) it doesn't happen. If I leave the watch on the charger for an hour it causes the fitness / activity tracker to lock up.

Oct 29, 2025 6:42 AM in response to krene727

I have been having the same issues with my Apple Watch Ultra since installing iOS26. It is incredibly frustrating and there doesn't appear to be any fix other than unpair and re-pair, which isn't a fix. I have found that my activity app does not connect after I have charged my watch overnight. When I leave it off the charger at night, it does not have any issues the next morning. I have been working around the issue by recording my workouts on my Peloton app and then whenever the activity app connects (usually about an hour after I put it on), my Peloton workouts populate in the activity app on my watch. However, today it's been about 5 hours and the activity app has yet to connect. A true fix from Apple is definitely needed.

Sep 26, 2025 3:22 PM in response to krene727

In my case, I was two updates behind on my iPhone (because the "automatic updates" setting neither updates automatically nor provides notifications to check for updates...it's only because my watch stopped tracking activity that I even thought to check). After two updates to the iPhone and one update to the Apple Watch, I unpaired and re-paired, and it STILL is not tracking my activity. I can see it graphed in the fitness app on my phone, but the graphs of my activity don't translate to numbers either in the app or on my watch face. For example, the time graph for standing hours shows I earned those standing hours at 1:00 AM and 6:00 AM-12:00 PM. However, my standing hours both in the app and on my watch, continue to read 0. Same for the calories burned per hour: 0 calories for the day on both app and watch face, but my calorie burn on the graph in the app shows I'm burning calories each hour. And I should have four exercise minutes according to the graph that shows I earned one minute during four separate hours in the morning. The watch is monitoring my heart rate, and apparently it's monitoring the other things as well, because my phone wouldn't have an estimate for calorie burn, know when I'm standing, or track that I've taken about 2000 steps so far today (I'm not keeping it with me, so I don't think it's tracking my distance itself without the watch's help). I'm going to post my issue separately if I don't find any other solutions in the forums, but this has been the worst update yet. I'm used to having issues with my wake-up alarm that need to be worked out in different ways after each update, and I was like fine, whatever, I'll get an alarm clock, but this one has cost me most of today so far and has lost me the reasons I got this watch in the first place.

Oct 1, 2025 9:12 AM in response to krene727

I have the exact same problem. I had an Apple Watch 2 and this started happening several years ago. Every morning the activity wouldn’t work. The rings are greyed out and everything shows 0s. If I try to start a workout, the watch freezes up. Sometimes it would start working around noon. It would track nothingin the morning. The only way to fix it was to do a complete reset as a new watch. This would work for a few weeks and the issue would come back.


Now I have an Apple Watch 7. I never had any problems with it. Last week I upgraded to os 26, and the activity stopped working in the morning. Trying to start a workout freezes up. I did a complete reset as a new watch. This solved the issue for about 5 days. This morning the activity has been all 0s all morning. We shouldn’t have to reset our watch every week…

Nov 18, 2025 6:10 AM in response to LD150

Definitely an OS problem. I have had this happen four times since updating.


I’ll wake up some days and everything works fine, I wake up other days and no tracking works at all. No steps, no heart rate, no stand hours, no calories burned, nothing. It won’t let me start a workout either.


I have a Series 10 Apple Watch, GPS, 46mm and a new iPhone 17 Pro Max.


The first time I went through every troubleshooting step I could find online. Resetting the watch completely is the only thing that fixes the problem, but only for a few days. It randomly happens some other morning and I have to do it all again.

WatchOS 26.0 update and activity will not work or connect

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.