Google’s Pixel Watch debuted in October to overall good impressions, but for many, a weird bug has surfaced where the smartwatch gets stuck on a worrisome “preparing to update” screen.
Since its debut in October, the Google Pixel Watch has picked up a handful of updates, including most recently a January update that brought an updated security patch.
Strangely, that update seems to be triggering a bug where the Pixel Watch gets stuck on a “preparing to update” screen that locks up the device. Notifications still ring and holding down the power button still opens the power menu, but touch input is blocked and leaving the device alone never shows any progress on installing the update. The bug surfaced for myself and one other member of the 9to5Google team just this week.
Looking back, it seems this has occurred with past updates as well. There are several reports from December, as well as from another member of the 9to5Google team in the same timeframe, where this “preparing to update” bug occurred on other Pixel Watch updates. For those affected, the story was similar. The watch showed the “preparing to update” screen and was left stuck there – one user’s watch was left stuck for two weeks.
This, notably, happens when the user is still wearing the smartwatch too, rather than happening while it is sitting on a charger idle.
The good news, however, is that there is a quick workaround for this.
If your Pixel Watch gets stuck on the “preparing to update” screen, you can get back to the system by following the steps below.
- Take the watch off
- Press Assistant/recents button, then press crown
- Hold for roughly 15 seconds or until the watch reboots
One thing to note is that, for myself and others who have tried this workaround, a slightly terrifying error interface appears on the first boot attempt. Moments later, though, the watch will reboot itself again and properly boot back up to Wear OS. Our best guess as to why this might be happening is that the update trying to install failed, and the watch is rolling back to the previous version, but we can’t be confident in that assessment.
Regardless of the actual reason, we hope that this is a bug that becomes less and less common going forward, as it’s definitely a point of confusion for users.
More on Google Pixel Watch:
- Pixel Watch Fall Detection starts appearing for some
- Spigen and Caseology quietly release new Pixel Watch covers and straps
- Fitbit was never teasing its own Wear OS smartwatch, just the Pixel Watch
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