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How to unpair an Apple Watch: Reset your smartwatch in a few easy steps

There are many reasons why you might want to unpair your Apple Watch. Maybe you have bought a new smartwatch and want to sell or trade in your old smartwatch. Or maybe give someone your older model as a gift.

Whatever your reason, it's not too difficult to unpair your Apple Watch. Apple itself has a page where you can unpair your Apple Watch in just a few steps. But – and this is important – as the tech giant states on its site: Unpairing your Apple Watch will delete it. This will effectively be a factory reset, so just keep that in mind.

Here are the steps.

Step 1: Make sure your Apple Watch and iPhone are close to each other

Self-explanatory, but make sure there isn't a lot of distance between your phone and your watch.

Step 2: Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone

This step is also easy to understand.


Photo credit: Screenshot: iPhone

Step 3: Click “My Watch” and then select “All Watches”.

This will display all the watches you have paired with your phone.

Step 4: Select the “i” information button next to the watch you want to unpair.

This will bring up the next page that you need to unlink.

iPhone shows Apple Watch in the Watch app


Photo credit: Apple

Step 5: Click the red “Unpair Apple Watch” button.

Again, make sure you want to do this as it will reset your watch to factory settings.

iPhone displays information about the Apple Watch, including the option to unpair


Photo credit: Apple

Step 6: Confirm the Apple Watch you want to unpair and then make a cellular decision

Apple makes sure you want to unpair a specific watch. You select “Unpair”. You will then be asked if you want to keep your cell phone plan on the watch. If you keep the watch and plan to use it again, you can keep the plan. If you plan to trade it in or sell it, you can unpair the cell phone plan.

Step 7: Enter your Apple ID password to complete unpairing.

If you have forgotten your Apple ID password, you can easily reset it.

This is the easiest way to unpair your Apple Watch. The entire process shouldn't take more than five minutes. If you can't find the iPhone the watch is paired with, you can reset the watch to factory settings to complete the task. Apple has the exact steps, but effectively you navigate to the settings on your watch and then reset it.

However, it's probably best to perform the reset via your phone. When you unpair a watch on your iPhone, a backup is created to save your content and settings. You can then use this backup to restore a new Apple Watch. And just like that, you're back to normal.

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