


#Backup apple watch settings update
As the illustration implies, you can now place your iPhone and Apple Watch in proximity to initiate a recovery mode that will update or restore watchOS wirelessly. Instead of showing a red exclamation mark (“!”), an Apple Watch with watchOS 8.5 should now display an image of an iPhone and Apple Watch side-by-side. Until this week, that is.įollowing the release of iOS 15.4 and watchOS 8.5 yesterday, Apple quietly updated the same support article with new instructions, revealing a wireless “recovery mode” that’s now available in watchOS 8.5. Instead, Apple’s simple instructions for an Apple Watch that won’t boot up have always been to try rebooting it, and if that doesn’t work, then send it in for repair. There is a hidden diagnostic port on the Apple Watch, but that’s intended to be used by Apple’s engineers, not mere mortals such as ourselves. This is not nearly as easy with an Apple Watch, since there’s simply nowhere to plug it in. Once you’ve done that, you can restore a recent backup, and you’re back in business. For an iPhone or iPad, this isn’t a huge problem since you can always use the Lightning or USB-C port to plug it into a Mac, or even a Windows PC, and simply wipe the device and restore iOS or iPadOS from scratch. While it doesn’t happen all that often these days, there are occasions when an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch can get stuck in an unusable state. This week Apple released iOS 15.4 and watchOS 8.5, and while the latter offers very few new user-facing features, there’s one interesting addition that should make life easier for folks who have experienced a catastrophic crash on their Apple Watch.
