Is the display on your Apple Watch flickering? If so, disabling the Always-On setting will stop it until Apple investigates the issue and delivers a permanent fix.
According to reports from affected users, some of the latest Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 units are plagued with a display flickering issue.
Standard troubleshooting steps are of no help here. Apple told its authorized service providers to stop replacing such units. Instead, they should offer affected users a band-aid solution until the company gets to the bottom of the problem.
According to Apple, turning off the Always-On feature in the display settings will stop the flickering. Of course some people won’t like being told to stop using one feature just to quickly fix another one not working, but it is what it is.
A quick fix for the Apple Watch display flickering issue
An internal service memo Apple shared with its authorized service providers indicates that the display flickering issue predominantly affects the latest Apple Watch models though it doesn’t name any specific model.
The flickering appears to be rooted entirely in a software bug affecting all watchOS 10 versions released to date, including the latest watchOS 10.0.2 release.
Apple says service providers should not repair affected watches, and instead advise customers to keep their Apple Watch software up to date, suggesting that Apple will eventually make a fix available in a watchOS update.
To disable the Always-On feature, which displays the time and other glanceable information even when your wrist is down, go to Settings > Display & Brightness on the watch, scroll down and turn off the Always On setting.
watchOS 10.1, expected to be released to the public next week, doesn’t seem to include a fix for this, according to Apple’s release notes for the update.
It might be delivered via watchOS 10.0.3 or at a later date once Apple has investigated the problem and created a solution. Complaints from affected customers on Reddit and Apple’s Support Community website suggest that this is a software issue caused by an as-of-yet unknown software bug.
Activity rings turning pink? You’re not alone
The memo also acknowledges that the Cupertino tech giant is investigating another software bug causing a user’s Activity rings to “temporarily turn pink.” This only happens with the Activity rings on a watch face, not in the Fitness app.
Other watch complications are also affected, according to one user on Reddit:
Randomly after waking them up, random complications flicker to pink. It happens maybe once in 20-30 tries and usually 1 or up to 5 complications flicker to pink for like 0.2 seconds. Doesn’t matter what watch face I use and it happened on 10.0.0 and also on 10.0.1 even after unpairing and erasing the watch.
It randomly affects different watch faces, not just the new Modular Ultra one that Apple created specifically for the Apple Watch Ultra 2. There are no solutions to fix it, so you’ll have to be patient until a future watchOS update squishes this bug.