Suffering from the GPS bug in watchOS 7? You have to erase your iPhone …

Have you recently updated to iOS 14 and watchOS 7 ? Then you may have all kinds of weird bugs. Apple previously promised a solution, it is now. We are not very enthusiastic about it: it is a lot of hassle, where you have to disconnect the Apple Watch and erase your iPhone.

What is going on?

It is one of the most frequently reported watchOS 7 problems : your walking, cycling or running route is no longer recorded via GPS. And in some cases, data was also missing from previous workouts. But there’s a lot more rattling since the update. Apple describes the cluster of problems as follows:

• Your training route maps are missing from the Fitness app on your iPhone. These include both new and old workouts.
• Activity, Heart Rate, or other health-related apps cannot start or load data on your Apple Watch.
• The Fitness and Health apps do not start or load on your iPhone.
• The Fitness and Health apps shows an incorrect amount of data storage on your iPhone.
• The Condition app shows an incorrect amount of data storage on your Apple Watch.
• The Health app is missing data about Noise levels (environment and headphones).
• Your iPhone and / or Apple Watch are draining battery.

That’s how you solve it

If you have two or more of the above problems, Apple recommends that you go through the following steps. Do this very carefully, don’t skip anything.

Unpair Apple Watch from your iPhone

• Open the Watch app on your iPhone.
• Tap My Watch, then All Apple Watches.
• Tap the i next to the Watch you want to unpair.
• Tap Unpair Apple Watch. Your iPhone will now back up all your Apple Watch data.

Make a backup iPhone including health data

• Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
• Tap your name, then tap iCloud.
• Make sure the switch behind Health is green.
• Tap iCloud Backup.
• Tap Back Up Now to make a current backup of your iPhone.

Now open the Health app and tap your profile at the top right. At the very bottom, you can see when your health data was last backed up – it must have just happened.

Erase your iPhone

• Open the Settings app.
• Tap General> Reset.
• Tap Erase All Content and Settings.

Restore your backup

• Turn on your iPhone and follow the steps on the screen. Here you restore the iCloud backup you just made.
• Wait for your iPhone to reset – this may take a while.
• When your iPhone is ready, open the Watch app on your phone.
• Pair your Apple Watch again and restore the backup here too.

Everything should now work as it should. If you run into problems, it is best to contact Apple Support. Of course we hope that Apple will soon release an update that will fix all problems, but that remains to be seen. At the moment, the above method is the only one that will help.