Every now and then there comes a time when you need to reset your devices. It’s almost a law of nature — it happens with the best of laptops, desktops, and yes, even smartwatches. Maybe your Apple Watch feels slow or sluggish after years of use, maybe you want a clean slate, or maybe you’re selling it off and need to remove your personal information from it. So, if you’re unsure how to go about it, here is how to reset and unpair your Apple Watch.
Unpair and Reset Apple Watch Using iPhone
The most fool-proof way to factory reset your Apple Watch is by using the ‘Watch’ app on your iPhone. Here’s what you need to do. This way you can also erase your Apple Watch data if that’s what you want to do.
That’s it. Once you’ve done that, your Apple Watch will start taking a backup of its data on your iPhone and then reset itself to factory settings. This entire process can take some time. Once the process is complete, you can re-pair the watch to your iPhone if you want, or you can sell it, or hand it down to someone.
If, you’re simply looking to get a fresh start with your Apple Watch and pair it again with your own iPhone, you don’t need to disable the Activation Lock since you’ll be using it with the same Apple ID. Here’s how to do that:
Your Apple Watch will now reset to factory settings and you can set it up with your iPhone again.
If you’ve reset your Apple Watch directly from the watch itself, and you wish to give it away to someone else, you will need to disable the Activation Lock otherwise the watch will not pair with another iPhone. Here’s what you need to do:
You can now safely hand-over your Apple Watch to someone else.
If you have forgotten your Apple Watch password, you can still do a hard reset. Here’s how to do that.
Your Apple Watch will now reset and erase all its contents. You can then set it up again and set a new passcode for your watch.
Q. How do I get rid of someone else’s Apple ID on my Apple Watch?
A. If your Apple Watch is prompting you to enter the password to someone else’s Apple ID, it’s because of Activation Lock. Unfortunately, you can’t get rid of this. You will have to ask the previous owner of the watch to input that information on your Apple Watch to get past that.
Q. How to Clear RAM in Apple Watch?
Personally, I have reset my Apple Watch only twice — once because I had filled it too much with third party apps and I didn’t want to go through the pain of uninstalling them all, and the other time for this article to take the required screenshots. So yeah, there will be times when you might want to reset your Apple Watch, and now you know how you can go about it. Just keep in mind that if you don’t want to lose your Apple Watch data, you should always unpair it using your iPhone. Otherwise your data will not be backed up.
