“The more independent Apple makes the Apple Watch, with apps and more storage for music or podcasts, the more you need to think about backing up your data,” William Gallagher writes for AppleInsider:
The odds are that you have never knowingly backed up your Apple Watch. It’s not something you’ve had to think about, either, because the Watch has always been this adjunct to your iPhone. That’s steadily changing, however, and at some point you’re going to need to think about backups.
The good news is that your Apple Watch has been automatically backed up since the first day you had it. If you need to, though, there is a way to make a backup happen right now…
If you want to know for certain that your Apple Watch with all its apps and data is backed up, you can force it to happen.
Think twice, though. This works and it works immediately, but really what it does is start working immediately. It takes a long time.
And considering that your goal is to make a safe copy of your Apple Watch, you’re going to have an unhappy moment about halfway through because the process includes erasing the Watch.
MacDailyNews Note: While unpairing your Apple Watch from your iPhone will erase all data from your Apple Watch, when you pair your Apple Watch again and set it up from the backup, it’ll then be restored (save for a few exceptions).
Here’s what your Apple Watch backup includes:
• App-specific data (for built-in apps) and settings (for built-in and third-party apps). For example, Maps, distance, units, and your settings for Mail, Calendar, Stocks and weather.
• App layout on the Home screen
• Clock face settings, including your current watch face, customizations, and order
• Dock settings, including the order, whether you sort by favorites or recents, and available apps
• General system settings, such as your watch face, brightness, sound, and haptic settings
• Health and Fitness data, such as history, achievements, Workout and Activity calibration data from your Apple Watch, and user-entered data (To back up Health and Fitness data, you need to use iCloud or an encrypted iTunes backup.)
• Notification settings
• Playlists, albums, and mixes that are synced to your Apple Watch and your Music settings
• The Siri Voice Feedback setting for Apple Watch Series 3 or later that controls when Siri speaks
• Synced photo album (To see which album syncs, open the Apple Watch app, tap the My Watch tab, then tap Photos > Synced Album.)
• Time Zone
Here’s what your Apple Watch backup doesn’t include:
• Bluetooth pairings
• Credit or debit cards used for Apple Pay on your Apple Watch
• Passcode for your Apple Watch
Since it is backed up automatically, why would you want to do it manually and potentially screw it up? Sometimes people are just idiots.
Yes, and sometimes those people are known as Trondud.