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The app is in the App Store. The phone companion app installs on the phone just fine, but for some users it (randomly) fails to appear/install on the watch. The app does not show up in the "My Watch" listing in the iPhone Watch app either.

I saw a variety of advice sites saying this can be resolved by doing things like resetting / re-pairing the watch. Also, the app has always been approved pretty swiftly when submitting to the App Store.

So my question is: can it be something code/setup related that can be fixed at the dev level? Or is this just a pesky Apple bug?

Most users are on latest iOS/watchOS versions (11.4/4.3.1)

Kalle Richter
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oviroa
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  • If this was me, I'd start adding detailed logging to your app, and use something like SwiftyBeaver to write the logs too (AWS works too). You could also add code that on failure posts a dispatch block for the future a few seconds or minutes, or next startup. I don't know if you can determine that there is a connection to the watch or not but if you can log that too. On failure you could set a UIDefaults flag so that on every subsequent restart you would try again. Or every time the app becomes active, etc. but log log log log! Can't have enough info! – David H Jun 15 '18 at 20:53
  • @DavidH what would I log though? If the app is not installing therefore it cannot be launched, where would I write the logging code? I have analytics events in the app and crash logging, but nothing is firing since the app cannot be started. Or do you mean adding logging in the companion iOS app and log the communication between phone and watch? If that is the case, the phone is just going to tell me that the watch app cannot be reached. – oviroa Jun 15 '18 at 20:57
  • Well then poke around - if your app cannot reach the watch then something is wrong - BlueTooth turned off, whatever. I don't know. Just saying dig and find things you CAN log and then you can better understand what's going on. I seriously doubt you will find a magic solution. – David H Jun 16 '18 at 02:31
  • @DavidH Not looking for a magic solution. I have upped to logging and will keep an eye on it. Also, I am afraid you did not quite understand the problem. I am not having issues with the phone app connecting to the watch app. The watch app should (based on Apple docs) install automatically, implicitly, post-download, which seems to fail occasionally. Also, I was just wondering if anyone has seen this issue (which based on my research is pretty common) and found ways to eliminate it. Or whether this is an issue of o not-quite-mature platform or a configuration/code problem. – oviroa Jun 16 '18 at 04:02
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    Have you double checked with some of the users about the app appearing in the iPhone Watch app? There are two listings there, one for installed apps and one for available apps. If users have a lot of apps in can be a little confusing to find them. Also, remember that users can turn off auto-install of watch apps (I do this), so it does not have to auto-install on the watch. – Cobra Jun 18 '18 at 17:36

1 Answers1

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OK, so problem was a mismatch between OS version on the device and the target version for the watch extension in XCode. If the target version is greater then the watchOS version on Apple Watch, the app will not show up in the Watch app listing and will not install, when auto-install is on. Unfortunately, all this will happen silently, with no warning or cue in the UI.

oviroa
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