Do you want to protect your valuable fitness data on your smartwatch, not to mention music, apps and settings? Read on to find out how to back up Apple Watch. Apple Watch backup is relatively simple, and it’s definitely a good idea to save all stored data. If your watch breaks or gets damaged, it would be a nasty surprise to find out that all your personal data has also been lost.
There is only one complicated part of the process, which concerns the storage of health and activity data. For legal reasons, Apple will only back up Apple Watch for you if you first remember to encrypt it. But we’ll get there in a while.
Index
How to back up Apple Watch
Here’s the easiest part: Apple Watch constantly and automatically backs up to your iPhone companion, and it’s easy to restore your iPhone backup if the Apple Watch is reset for any reason.
For the most part, it is not necessary to do anything: backups take place automatically and without any action by the user. The only way we know to manually activate a backup is to unpair the Apple Watch from the iPhone, a process that makes a backup on the phone (if it is in the Bluetooth distance), but that makes even a reset of the watch – so do not do it lightly.
If you are concerned that the iPhone itself is deleted or lost, we make sure that all data from the Apple Watch (with the exception of health and activity data) are backed up every time the iPhone is backed up.
You must remember that Apple Watch at this stage of its evolution is in many respects an accessory of the iPhone rather than a true standalone product (we hope that Apple Watch 4 can exist without being tied to an iPhone, but this is just an unrealizable dream at this point) and then all that is on it is also stored on the iPhone.
The Apple Watch backup includes all settings (including the main screen app layout), app data, music/playlists, and photos. Note that it does not include credit and debit cards used in Apple Pay, nor does it include the watch access code.
How to restore an Apple Watch backup
After making sure that your iPhone data has been saved to iCloud or an encrypted iTunes backup, unpair the Apple Watch – which will create a new backup on the iPhone, as we said – and then plug it back in and set it up. Be sure to select “Restore from backup” instead of “Configure as new Apple Watch”; after this operation, you can set it normally.
How to back up your fitness, health and activity data
This is very important: Apple can back up health/medical/fitness data only if it has been encrypted for more information have a peek here.
When backing up iPhone to iTunes, remember to choose the encrypted option. If you perform an unencrypted backup, all your exercise results data and running times on Apple Watch will be lost. (Even an iCloud backup will be fine – it’s just the unencrypted iTunes backup that causes the problem).
Backing up encrypted iTunes can create it in the same way as an unencrypted backup, automatically or manually, only with the encryption option selected. The first time you do it, there will be an extra step where you need to select a password. Do not forget it! Not even Apple will know the password, so you will not be able to recover it.
Help! I lost Apple Watch Activity data!
You have made an unencrypted backup of your Apple Watch and when you move from one iPhone to another and then go to pairing the device with the new iPhone, you will find that all the data related to the activity had disappeared. In this case, do not panic: there is a solution.
The data of the physical exercises are however stored on the old iPhone … assuming it has not yet been deleted. Clean the new iPhone, create another backup of the old iPhone (and remember to encrypt it this time), restore the new iPhone from that backup, delete the Apple Watch and pair it with the new iPhone. After all this, you will find that the badges and execution times are all back.
In this guide you can find out how to calibrate Apple Watch Series 0 or 1 and improve the accuracy of distance, step and calorie measurements.
Here’s how to check the memory of the Apple Watch and check the space still available.