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You know it. Your Apple Watch is basically an extension of your iPhone. The current weather and the forecasts will then directly be pushed in the same format as the iPhone weather app.
For the US, most of the data are pushed from the Weather Channel but the providers widely depend on the country you live in. Some developers embarked on a journey to add a little bit of personality and humor to the weather forecasts. If you have not yet, we recommend that you try Carrot Weather which is available on the Apple Store.
Whatever the app you are using, the main purpose of any weather widget is to show what you can expect from the weather. The last thing you want is for the Apple Watch not to load the weather at all.
The goal of the article is to help you fix any issue you may have with the Apple Watch weather widget. We will present them in order of complexity so our advice is to follow them in chronological up to the point you will find the solution to clear the sky.
Restart your iPhone and Apple Watch
Before getting into the more complex procedures, the first two things you should try are to restart both your iPhone and Apple Watch. We use these devices so much that some clutter may be saved in the device’s memory. Restarting the devices is called a “soft reset”, it will wipe the internal memories and is often the only needed operation to bring back the weather to life.
How to restart the iPhone?
Restarting an iPhone is a procedure that you should remember. It is very useful and not only for fixing the weather forecast. Anytime your iPhone is acting a bit weird, the first thing you should try is a soft reset.
- Press simultaneously the phone right-side button and the Vol+ and Vol- on the left side. Keep them pressed for a couple of seconds until the phone switch to the restart screen.
- Just Slide the top “Slide to Power Off.”
- The final step is just to switch on the iPhone again by pressing the right side button until you see the Apple Logo. Release the button and wait for the booting process to complete.
How to restart the Apple Watch?
Now that the iPhone is wiped clean, let’s reset the Apple Watch. There is only one procedure so you do not have to worry. Press the crown and the left side button on the watch. Be careful, the button does not protrude so it may be confusing to know if the button is actually pressed or not. Keep pressing the crown and the button until the screen of the Apple Watch turns black and the Apple logo appears. Release the button and let the Apple Watch do its things until the passcode screen appears.
Is the Apple Watch connected?
In a nutshell, the Apple Watch is an extension of your phone. Therefore, it needs to be correctly connected either through LTE (cellular) or Wifi to receive the Weather data or anything else.
There are two potential sources of connection issues to be checked:
- The Apple Watch is not linked to the iPhone and cannot receive weather data from it
- The Apple Watch is not connected to the internet if it uses a data/LTE plan
Let’s see how to check the different cases and fix a potential issue.
Is the Watch receiving data from the phone?
In most cases, the Apple Watch will mimic what has been received by phone. Therefore, ensuring that the Watch is correctly linked to the iPhone is critical.
Doing so is easy. Swipe up on the Apple Watch face making the control center appear.
On the top of the control center, you should see the icon of a green phone, meaning that the Apple Watch and iPhone are linked. If the icon is red, it means that the link is broken.
Start by checking that your phone is switched on, of course. Next, make sure that the wifi network is turned on on the Watch, and in your phone control center, check that your phone has access to the cellular network and that the Wifi is on.
Is the Watch receiving data from the cellular network?
If you use an Apple Watch that connects independently to the internet via an LTE/cellular data plan, ensure that the connection is turned on and confirm that the Watch is not in airplane mode.
A cellular Apple Watch will use the same network as a phone, so the signal strength may not be sufficient to receive data. Check that you can see 3-4 dots on the top left corner of the screen, meaning that the signal quality is not the issue.
Is the Weather App allowed to check the location and receive data?
Now that we sorted that, the Apple Watch and iPhone are correctly linked to each other and can receive data from the internet, we have to make sure that the Weather App -in the rest of the article, we will use the Weather App as the reference but the same principles apply for your favorite weather app.
On the iPhone:
- From the home screen, tap on the settings icon.
- Look for the “Weather” app in the list of installed apps.
- Make sure that “Location” is set to Always and that cellular Data is switched on. Note that you will also have the possibility to change the units from Celsius to Fahrenheit from the weather menu.
- Finally, open the Watch App on the phone and ensure that “mirror my Phone” is selected.
How to refresh the weather data
Refreshing the data is critical. You certainly do not want to forget your umbrella after watching yesterday’s forecasts.
To do so, the steps to follow are:
- On the Apple Watch, Tap on the Digital Crown and open the Settings App
- Slide to reach the “General” setting and tap on it
- Slide “Background App Refresh” and slide down until you reach the “Weather” App and ensure that “Weather” is switched on
Did nothing work? Try these last steps!
If nothing worked, the last steps might seem drastic, but these are the last steps, aren’t they?
Try uninstalling the Weather app and reinstalling it
Try to unpair the watch and to repair it with the iPhone. The process to follow is detailed here.
