Apple Watch cannot reconnect

I followed the steps many others have posted but have had no luck...stuck in a waiting to reconnect connecting loop

hopefully Apple has a fix for this soon

I got it working by connecting my laptop, phone, and watch all to the same wifi network where devices could see each other. The problem was that all the devices were on a school network where the devices couldn't see each other. I created my own wifi network using my windows pc hotspot feature, which then used the school network under-the-hood, but allowed the devices to see each other since there was lower security rules in place.

In an earlier Xcode version, connecting to the school network with all devices still worked for Apple Watch to be available. It seems like connecting through the iPhone then going to the watch for testing the app is no longer working...The app now goes directly to the watch over the network.

After spending weeks trying to connect my Apple Watch Series 5 to Xcode, I suddenly discovered that all watches before the Series 5 (including the Series 5) can only connect to 2.4G Wi-Fi. My iPhone and Mac are connected to 5G Wi-Fi. So when I tried connecting my iPhone and Mac to the 2.4G Wi-Fi, the watch connected instantly.

But that's weird, There are a few times that I still using 5G Wi-Fi for iPhone and Mac, but I can still connect to my series 5. There might be some bug here for connecting watch on different Wi-Fi but actually the SAME LAN.

I had the same problem with "Waiting to reconnect to Apple Watch" because I used Personal Hotspot. I got to go to cafe to join WiFi there and the issue was resolved. iPhone, mac and watch want to be in the same WiFi network and Personal Hotspot was always the issue, starting from very first versions of watchOS.

XCode 15.2 beta and WatchOS 10.2 - Any fix to this real problem? Was able to connect few days ago and since no luck. Yup, unpaired then paired. Reloaded. Rebooted.

This is a workaround that won't work if you only have one Mac... In my case, I happen to have a Macbook Pro and a mac mini, and the problem did not occur on the Macbook Pro, so I copied watchOS DeviceSupport (latest is Watch6,6 10.2 (21S364)) to the mac mini, and the symptom was fixed. For some reason the download of watchOS DeviceSupport (about 2GB) appears to stop completing.

The problem was that my MacBook was connected to the 5 GHz WI-FI network while Apple Watch was connected to the same network but to 2.4 GHz.

Changing MacBook's WI-FI to the SAME network but 2.4 GHz helped.

I'm using Apple Watch Series 4 with WatchOS 10.3.1 and Xcode 15.3 (15E5202a) Release Candidate.

It looks like the paired iPhone's network can be kept as 5 GHz, but you can try changing it too if the previous step doesn't help.

Damn it Apple! Xcode 15.3 stopped seeing my Apple Watch Ultra 2. So I disconnected thinking I was going repair it and now NADA. I have been crawling all over the net looking for solutions for this. Restarted pretty much everything numerous times. Run Sysdiags, blah blah nothing is working. My iPhone sees it and all of that is working just fine. But Xcode and Devices and Simulators DO NOT see it. Ran the terminal command above and it does not show up. I have the device connected via BOTH bluetooth and WIFI but oddly it (the watch) does NOT see the Mac when searching for Bluetooth devices (system settings are open and on Bluetooth) or anything else for that matter.

xcrun devicectl list devices

DOES NOT show the watch only my iPhones and iPads. Odd.

Devices: Name Hostname Identifier State Model

iPad 2024 xx-iPad-2024.coredevice.local C72B3F88-06A9-4CD4-8AFA-49AD478540AB connected iPad Air (5th generation) (iPad13,16) iPhone13 xx-iPhone13.coredevice.local 43A16EBE-911D-4F89-AA42-3DF3B0D21AF9 connected iPhone 13 (iPhone14,5)

No watch?! And yet it is right here and talking to my iPhone?!

tried unpairing my watch from xcode to pair again but now it's gone forever. I am running watchOS 10.5 (also tried 10.4) and iOS 17.4.1 but it doesn't work.

My Apple Watch has the same issue. It was connected, then after Xcode 15.3 (released) it stopped talking to Apple Watch device. I unpaired to repair and have never been able to find or see the watch again. Tried toggling developer mode on the watch, no dice. I can connect the watch to Xcode 15.3 on my Laptop, but no longer on mu desktop. If I run: xcrun devicectl list devices the watch is NOT listed as one of the visible devices. All I see are the iPhone and iPad which had also been setup as dev devices?! Why has this issue been ongoing for so long?! I am seeing people reporting this back 8 months now?!

Did all the updates and still cannot connect to the apple watch???? On the same wifi network just loops on waiting to connect. Xcode 15.3, watch os 10.4 but shows 10.0.1 under devices. How to just remove the watch from the device list, I see no way to remove. WHY is developing app for the watch SO hard to do?

I managed the solve this issue by

1. Unpair watch and iPhone from Xcode (right-click).
2. Quit Xcode and disconnect the iPhone (Airplane mode)
3. Remove trusted computers on both devices.
4. Disable developer mode
5. Restart both devices.
6. Connect the iPhone and trust the computer using Finder
7. Open Xcode and pair the iPhone (trust again)
8. Enable developer mode on watch and iPhone
9. It should work.

This was basically following the advice in this post + unpairing the devices from Xcode: https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/734694?page=2

Also just noticed, perhaps with the latest versions of Xcode and iOS, that watchOS connectivity of my Apple Watch Ultra has completely ceased to function. My app's widgets no longer update and I'm unable to pull logs off of the watch to diagnose the issue. My computer sees the watch and allows me to select it as a target deployment device, but when attempting to deploy I get stuck "Waiting to connect" or "Waiting to reconnect".

Trying to root cause the issue here because this is driving me nuts. From the Console, filtering on process:xcode any:watch, I see the following message which looks suspect:

DVTFoundation	2024-04-26 13:44:28.277226 -0700	<Missing Description>	 DVTDeviceOperation: Started throttledReconnect: {
    "device_identifier" = "00008301-REDACTED";
    "device_isCoreDevice" = 1;
    "device_model" = "Watch6,18";
    "device_osBuild" = "10.5 (21T5560d)";
    "device_platform" = "com.apple.platform.watchos";
    "device_thinningType" = "Watch6,18";
    "dvt_coredevice_version" = "355.26";
    "dvt_mobiledevice_version" = "1643.100.58";
    "operation_name" = throttledReconnect;
}
DVTFoundation	2024-04-26 13:45:34.978991 -0700	<Missing Description>	 DVTDeviceOperation: Started connect: {
    "device_identifier" = "00008301-REDACTED";
    "device_isCoreDevice" = 1;
    "device_model" = "Watch6,18";
    "device_osBuild" = "10.5 (21T5560d)";
    "device_platform" = "com.apple.platform.watchos";
    "device_thinningType" = "Watch6,18";
    "dvt_coredevice_version" = "355.26";
    "dvt_mobiledevice_version" = "1643.100.58";
    "operation_name" = connect;
}	Xcode

And then later on:

DVTFoundation	2024-04-26 13:45:45.808840 -0700	<Missing Description>	 DVTDeviceOperation: Ended connect: {
    "device_identifier" = "00008301-REDACTED";
    "device_isCoreDevice" = 1;
    "device_model" = "Watch6,18";
    "device_osBuild" = "10.5 (21T5560d)";
    "device_platform" = "com.apple.platform.watchos";
    "device_thinningType" = "Watch6,18";
    "dvt_coredevice_version" = "355.26";
    "dvt_mobiledevice_version" = "1643.100.58";
    "operation_duration_ms" = 10829;
    "operation_errorCode" = "-25";
    "operation_errorDomain" = "com.apple.dt.deviceprep";
    "operation_name" = connect;
}

I've been able to resolve this loop by making sure that my iPhone is plugged into my Mac when trying to connect to my Apple Watch.