Apple Watch Not Sending or Receiving Messages? Here’s What To Do

Are you experiencing issues with your Apple Watch where messages fail to send or receive properly? Many users have encountered similar problems, facing difficulties in sending iMessage and receiving texts.

Here’s a quick guide on how to fix problems with the Messages app on your Apple Watch.

Common Problems Reported by Apple Watch Users

  1. Sending Texts as SMS: Users often find that their Apple Watch sends messages as regular SMS (green bubbles) instead of iMessages (blue bubbles), even though the recipients have an iPhone and iMessage enabled.
  2. Failed Message Sending: Your Apple Watch may get stuck on “Sending…” or showing a failed delivery status.
  3. iCloud Password Prompts: Apple Watch prompts users to re-enter their iCloud passwords, even though the password is correct.

7 Ways To Fix an Apple Watch That Won’t Send Text Messages

Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of the steps that could potentially fix the problem.

1. Check iPhone Connectivity

  • Ensure your paired iPhone is powered on and connected to Wi-Fi or cellular.
  • Confirm that iMessage is signed in and enabled on your iPhone.

2. Verify Cellular Plan and Network

  • Check if your Apple Watch has a cellular plan activated through your carrier.
  • Contact your carrier for any potential network configuration issues, especially if you can’t send or receive messages on cellular but can make calls.

3. Confirm Apple ID Settings

  • On your iPhone, navigate to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive.
  • Add your Apple ID along with your phone number. This step seems to have resolved issues for some users.

4. Restart and Reconnect

  • Restart both your Apple Watch and iPhone.
  • Re-pair your Apple Watch with your iPhone if the problem persists.

5. Disable Do Not Disturb Mode

  • Check if the Do Not Disturb mode is enabled on your Apple Watch. If the setting is activated, it will prevent you from receiving notifications, including incoming text messages.
  • You should turn this feature off.
apple watch do not disturb image

6. Re-pair your Apple Watch

It’s time to unpair your Apple Watch. Don’t worry. You will be able to re-pair it after.

  1. Take out your iPhone and Apple Watch.
  2. Open the Watch app on your iPhone.
  3. Go to My Watch > tap the (i) symbol.
  4. Select Unpair Apple Watch.
  5. Confirm the action using your Apple ID (for some people, this is not required).
  6. Now, wait until both devices are disconnected from each other.

When you see the “Start Pairing” message, go ahead and re-pair both devices and use the backup to restore everything.

7. Update Software

  • Make sure your Apple Watch and iPhone have the latest software updates installed.

Our readers found success after following these steps. For instance:

  • DaveB added their Apple ID to the Send & Receive settings, which resolved their issue after a few minutes.
  • Zane358 reported the problems were fixed by turning on the “send as Apple ID” setting (from step 3).

Leave a Comment

  1. What about other issues? I can send and receive iMessages from my Watch but when it comes to SMS texts I can only receive. When I try to reply to SMS texts from my watch it just says “Message send failure” — what could be wrong?

    Reply
  2. ever since I updated to ios 11 on my phone and os 4 on my watch I am unable to reply all to a group text string using my watch. when I do reply, it only goes back to the sender of the most recent message,, not to the entire group. this was not the case prior the upgrade.

    I’ve reviewed settings on the watch app and can’t find anything to address this issue.

    Reply
  3. This problem for me seems to have started recently (perhaps after updating to iOS 11). I am only able to receive notifications within a few minutes of doing a hard reset on the watch. But then, I stop receiving any sort of notifications. Watch is still connected, I am able to send messages from my watch. My settings are set to mirror my iPhone. Not sure how to address this problem. It is really frustrating and defeats my purpose of having the device.

    Reply
  4. Bless you! This problem started after the last round of updates and has been driving me insane. Your second solution, “turn off do not disturb” turned out to be my issue. Since I never turned it on, I didn’t think to look…thank you!!

    Reply
  5. When I first got my watch and synced it, it was perfect. Then I did the update, and all .my messages deleted. I have no message history. I took all the steps above and then some. I’ve exchanged it and the same thing. My message history is gone from my watch, but it’s on my phone my ipads, my macbooks. How can I sync my phone to my watch to get my message history back? This is driving me absolutely insane!! Help 🙂

    Reply
  6. SINCE I UPDATED MY IPHONE AND WATCH.I STOPPED RECEIVING MY ALERTS ON PHONE,WITH NO SOUND.IT RINGS WHEN IT WANTS.IT HASN’T RANG OR VIBRATED IN 4 DAYS.I HAVE TRIED EVERYTHING.I DIT A HARD RESET AND WORKED FOR LIKE 5 MINUTES AND THAN AFTERTHAT NOTHING.I UNPAIRED MY WATCH AND RESET IT AND NOTHING.I CAN SEE THAT I’LL HAVE LIKE 10 TEXTS BUT NO SOUND.I DON’T GET ANY OF MY OTHER ALERTS AT ALL…I DON’T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO….

    Reply
  7. I’m having some similar issues. I can receive messages from anyone except my wife. I get them on the phone, sometimes with notification and sometimes not; but not on the watch. Not even a notification. Have gone through all the settings, updated both devices, paired and unpaired. Spent 90 minutes on the phone with Apple… Nothing!

    Reply
      • I have to clarify; it’s my wife’s watch not getting things, and her phone acting strange. When I used “I” I meant her.

        I was on the phone with them for 90 minutes..got nowhere.

        They had me go through all the settings, unpair and repair(I wish), Check for do not disturb, airplane mode, blocked contacts, network settings, power cycle, get the newest OS version on the phone etc. Nothing helped..

        The agent said she would have a senior tech call me 30 minutes after that call ended, but I didn’t get the call; I should say they did not call.

        I do have to say that the problem isn’t across the board, its only with me (husband) and my iPhone . We did all of that on my phone as well. I dont have the watch.

        Reply
  8. Hi I did the lastest up date on my Apple Watch now I don’t receive messages or phone calls I only receive them on my iPhone. I haven’t touched any of the settings….

    Reply
    • had same problem. Try shutting down the watch and restarting (hold side button until you see power off option….slide to right. Wait a few minutes, then restart (press/hold side button). That seems to fix my issue, when it happens

      Reply
  9. you may have already answered this question but i just got a new iphone and on my old iphone it was synced with my apple watch to where when i got text messages it would ding my iwatch but now its not and i dont remember how to turn that feature back on.

    Reply
  10. My problem is a bit different my AW3 with LTE just randomly fails to send message, and often the message goes green instead of blue. If I hard reset the watch, it then works again. This happens all of the time and it’s really pissing me off. I’ve tried unpair/pair multiple times. Problem still happens.

    Really frustrating when I’m on a run and try to reply, and get message send fail. I have to stop, reset my watch, reply and hope my workout doesn’t get scrapped.

    Reply
  11. Hi. I had the same problem and would only get iMessages and calls but no text messages. I went to a rep at Telus ( as that’s my phone provider) spent over a hour trying to trouble shoot, we wiped and reset the watch twice, we went through every trouble shooting idea we found online. Finely I called Apple support. I was on the phone with a lady for over a hour troubleshooting every possible reason this could happen. Finely she said she had no idea and got me on the line with a “ the senior Apple tech who knows everything” 5 minutes on the phone with him everything was fixed. He had me go into my WATCH and set my watch on ON AIRPLANE MODE for 15 seconds.. then take it off airplane mode. He told me that when you change your phone plan, reset your watch/ phone or reboot it sometimes the shut down only partly shuts all the communication wires down and back up. So basically my watch was getting only part of a full shut down reboot. With the part being text kinda left out. The only way to FULLY shut all signals off to restart them is acually airplane mode even if you fully restarted the watch and phone. After setting my phone in airplane mode for 15 seconds and back on everything was reset and fixed. Such a simple thing that took hours of trouble shooting and 3 techs .

    Reply

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