How to turn an Apple Watch on or off

While the Apple Watch packs a lot of smarts, WatchOS relies on a lot of unlabeled controls, like swipe gestures. The same user interface helps fit more on the tiny screen and can make some seemingly simple tasks less obvious, leading to questions like, “How do I turn on my Apple Watch?” Or, “How do I force restart an Apple Watch?”

Because Apple Watches are designed to track sleep and don’t need to be powered off every night, you may own one for months before you realize you don’t know how to turn your Apple Watch on or off. Thankfully, every model shares the same user interface, whether it’s the Apple Watch Ultra 2 or the more affordable SE, and turns on and off in the same way.

How to turn on an Apple Watch

Turning on your Apple Watch is simple, provided there’s nothing wrong with it.

1. Hold down the side button underneath the Digital Crown until the Apple Logo appears.
2. Wait for the watch face to appear.

How to turn off an Apple Watch

If your Apple Watch is glitching, turning it off can be an easy fix.

1. Press and hold the side button underneath the Digital Crown until you see the power off slider.

2. Slide your finger across the power-off slider to power the smartwatch down.

How to make an Apple Watch turn on again

If you’re finding that your Apple Watch won’t turn on, there could be something funky going on with it. The tips below can help with troubleshooting.

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Charge your Apple Watch

It might seem obvious, but if you haven’t used your Apple Watch in a few days and can’t get it to turn on, the battery could be drained. The battery on Apple Watch will at most only last a couple of days on a single charge (unless you’ve got one of the Ultra models), so it’s easy to forget to charge them.

To charge your Apple Watch, just connect it to the magnetic charging puck that it comes packaged with and wait for it to display its charging status.

If you find that it won’t charge, you could have a faulty charging cable or power outlet, both of which are worth swapping for alternatives to see if they’re the source of the issue. The watch also won’t charge properly if the back is dirty, so ensure there is no build-up by cleaning your watch. A third-party watch case that covers the back could also cause the watch not to charge.

Reboot your Apple Watch

Sometimes Apple’s software can get thrown for a loop and your Apple Watch can be left unresponsive — a reboot can help break it out of this cycle more quickly. You should only try the reboot if the method for turning your Apple Watch on or off above didn’t work. To reboot, press and hold the side button and Digital Crown at the same time until the Apple logo appears on the screen.

Why won’t my Apple Watch turn on?

If none of those fixes are working for you, there could be a few things wrong with your Apple Watch, and it could be worth heading to your local Apple Store to see if an employee can help you figure things out (or book in a repair if needed).

However, there are still a few things that could be happening.

It’s frozen

Sometimes (rarely, but still) your Apple Watch will have a bit of a heart attack and just freeze up. It’s hard to detect, but if the watch is unresponsive and won’t turn on or off, this could be the cause.

Fixing this could be a matter of a simple reboot as detailed above, but if you still can’t jog it to life then you might have to head to an Apple Store or a third-party repair shop.

Theater Mode or Power Reserve are turned on

Apple Watch devices have two modes that can make them look unresponsive if you’re tapping the screen: Theater Mode and Power Reserve.

The first is activated by swiping up from the bottom of the watch screen to access the Control Center, where you can hit the Theater icon to activate or deactivate it, to stop your screen from lighting up and disturbing anyone. However, clicking the Digital Crown or side button in Theater Mode will wake your watch, so if it’s still not responding even to the buttons, it won’t be this.

The same goes for Power Reserve, which Apple Watch models can use to keep their battery going for longer when they’re on very low charge, turning off power-hungry settings to go more basic. Again, clicking the side button or Digital Crown should wake it.