Wear OS 5 Pixel Watch update issues: Black screen soft brick, wrong font

Following yesterday’s rollout of Wear OS 5 to the original Pixel Watch and Pixel Watch 2, some users have reported issues with the update.

After or during the Wear OS 5 update process, they’re met with a black screen that has a small crossed out Bluetooth logo at the bottom. 

The issue is resolved with a reset from Fastboot. This will wipe all data on the device, and you will need to “sign in with your most recent PIN or Google Account login when you re-pair your phone and Watch.” This is an anti-theft measure. 

Google describes the steps here:

1. Restart your Google Pixel Watch.
2. Long press the crown and the side button of your Google Pixel Watch for around 20 seconds until it shows a dark screen with the white ‘G’ logo.
   • If your watch is currently turned off, press the crown for a few seconds to turn it on.
3. As soon as the watch shows the white ‘G’ logo, tap the upper left-hand and lower right-hand edges of the watch face screen at the same time. The watch will go into ‘Fastboot’ mode.
   
4. Press the side button next to the crown to scroll down.
5. When ‘Recovery mode’ is highlighted, press the crown. The message ‘No command’ will appear on the watch face.
6. Press and hold the crown and swipe up on your screen at the same time. A debug screen will appear on the watch face.
7. Swipe down until ‘Wipe data/factory reset’ is highlighted.
8. Swipe right to reset your watch and PIN.
9. Swipe right again to confirm.
10. Reset from your phone settings.

If you’ve tried the steps above and your watch is still not reset, contact support.

There are more than a few reports of this, but most people have not encountered this issue. On our end, we’ve successfully updated an original Pixel and Pixel Watch 2 to Wear OS 5.

Meanwhile, the font on the Pixel Watch has reverted to Roboto from Google Sans — look at the ‘G’ — for some reason. This will presumably be fixed in a future update.

Original Pixel Watch vs. Pixel Watch 2

As a reminder, you have to manually download Pixel Recorder from the Play Store.