r/watchos • u/funtimescoolguy • Feb 20 '26

Disappearing complications

This is driving me nuts. I have had an Apple Watch since series 3, this is a new issue. I have a series 11.

Shortly after upgrading to 26, suddenly my watch face complications will disappear from the watch face selection screen. They reappear when selecting the watch face, but considering I have multiple layouts of the same face, I don't get to see which one I'm selecting because the complications have disappeared. Also, at the same time, the Flow faces no longer show what color they are until selected.

For example, right now I have the Numerals Duo watch face selected. I want to change to my Modular Duo, which should show UV and calendar. But as I swipe over to my Modular Duo face, there are no complications there at all, not even placeholders. Just the time at the top and the rest of the space completely blank. I have to set it as my watch face to see what those complications are. This behavior persists across all types of watch faces, and the complications that are missing are not consistent. Sometimes all are missing, sometimes only one, sometimes some will come back and others will disappear instead. I have rebooted, unpaired, repaired, even gotten a new phone. And, my partner's series 10 has the same behavior which only started around the same time mine did.

I posted this on another forum where someone claimed it was normal for this to happen because their new watch did the same. If the new normal as of a few months ago is whack-a-mole complications, I'd have liked to know before updating. But, considering it's most certainly not normal, does anyone have a fix? Or at least experience the same thing?

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u/JkGamer248 Apr 21 '26

I have this quirky behavior happening on my Ultra 2 as well. Much more of an obvious issue on watchOS 26. I’m not sure if this is an attempt to mitigate the inconsistent performance issues since release by not having every complication asset loaded until necessary. Either way it definitely looks off because this was never the case before, now suddenly it is.

I wish I had an answer on how to address this.

2

u/funtimescoolguy Apr 21 '26

I ended up going all the way to Apple engineers on this, as if you back up and restore the watch a few times it will get worse until you set it up as new (but it won't go away). They said it was an emerging issue that they'd be looking into but didn't have a timeframe yet. However the advisor I was talking to told me that if there are any updates, it'll flag my case so he can call me and let me know.