iPhone tower · floor

How to turn off Apple Watch: four different things

The procedure is three actions, and the second one is not visible until the first has happened. But before that, it is worth being clear about which of four things you are trying to do — because a dark watch is usually not an off one.

That first distinction does most of the work. A watch whose screen has gone dark has not turned itself off; it has stopped showing anything, which is what it does when a wrist goes down. Apple names the three ways back — wrist, tap, Digital Crown — and adds a specific diagnostic for the first: “If your Apple Watch doesn’t wake when you raise your wrist, make sure you selected the proper wrist and watch orientation.”

If the intention really is off, here is the sequence.

Step two is the one worth naming, because step one does not look unfinished. Holding the side button does not produce the Power Off slider directly — it produces a screen of sliders, and the power control has to be tapped before the slider you want appears. Two taps, not one.

Turning it back on is simpler and Apple states it in one line: hold the side button until the Apple logo appears. If nothing appears, Apple names two possibilities in order — “it may need to be charged or you may need to force it to restart”.

Apple treats the two devices as a pair. The page opens with it: “If something isn’t working right, try restarting your Apple Watch and its paired iPhone.” And it gives the iPhone procedure on the same page — on a model with Face ID, press and hold the side button and a volume button and drag the slider; on a model without, hold the side or top button until the slider appears. It adds a third route that needs no buttons at all: Settings → General → Shut Down, which works “with any model” and needs no button combination at all.

That last route is worth carrying away even for the iPhone alone. Settings → General → Shut Down works on any iPhone and asks nothing of your grip. Button combinations differ between models and are the part of these instructions that goes out of date; a menu item does not.

One thing this page will not tell you is when to turn an Apple Watch off at all. Apple frames restarting as something to try “if something isn’t working right”, and that is the whole of the documented reason. There is no published maintenance schedule, and a page that invented one would be adding a habit rather than reporting a fact.

Nor will it say what a watch that still will not turn on after charging and a forced restart needs. Apple’s own next step at that point is a separate support article about a watch that will not charge or will not turn on — which is the manufacturer marking the end of what a set of button instructions can fix.

The floors below take it three ways: the four meanings of off, the buttons on both devices, and the other paired accessory with procedures of its own.

What this tower will not do

It will not tell you a dark screen means the watch is off. Apple lists three ways to wake a sleeping display, and a sleeping display is the ordinary state.

It will not present the forced restart as an alternative. Apple attaches a condition to it — only if you are unable to restart normally — and the order is the advice.

And it will not suggest turning it off regularly. Apple gives one reason, which is that something is not working right, and there is no published schedule to report. What holds instead is simple: the three-step power-off sequence, the note that an Apple Watch cannot be restarted while charging, the instruction to hold the side button until the Apple logo appears when turning it on, the condition attached to the forced restart and its ten-second minimum, the iPhone shut-down routes including Settings → General → Shut Down, the three ways to wake the display and the wrist orientation note, and the Always On setting with its Low Power Mode and Apple Watch SE exceptions are quoted from Apple’s Apple Watch User Guide, listed below.