Apple suggests that the watch be plugged in and on the charger before upgrading, and it’s probably more important for a big upgrade like this. It’s disappointing if you want to keep the watch on, but I’d suggest it going forward.
That was a change in watchOS 11 initially - the official way to change faces is long-press and then swipe and tap to select. But that’s now an option. On the watch, Settings app, scroll down to “Clock”, and turn on swipe to switch watch faces. This was added with watchOS 11.1 I think…
This feature should still work as I’m up to date on my iPhone. Check the settings on your phone under Apps for Remote as the first one where Remote needs to access the local network might have been turned off somehow:
I am aware of that and usually when I get a message that an update is available I select ‘install tonight’ and all goes fine because I charge my watch at night. This time the update was forced, it just started and gave me no option to choose anything.
I know and have had that set ever since it was available. The issue I am facing is that the watch no longer DIRECTLY switches faces after a swipe, sometimes an app opens, seemingly one related to a complication on the face you are moving from. I have now discovered that it seems to matter where you swipe or start the swipe. Apple changed something that makes it harder to just change faces by swiping.
Yes, it still works on my Phone and I have Local Network on. My phone still sees the Macs on my network and can still control them from my Phone. My issue is that the remote app on the watch has been removed or replaced. Before the update my watch also had the iTunes Remote with an icon like a play button. Now the watch only has the Apple TV Remote with an icon like the physical Apple TV remote. That remote only sees my Apple TV. Apple removed something from the Watch that I used a lot. Removing things for no reason is bad, Apple should stop doing that.
I haven’t had that issue on watchOS 11 at all. A swipe always works for me. Long-press, swipe, and tap will always work, though.
I do have to say that my biggest pet peeve on watchOS, by far, relates to switching focus. I have a few scheduled focus switches during the day and when it happens the watch insists on showing me the notifications that happened when I wasn’t in the current focus, always when I am trying to do something else. I wish there was a way to turn this off. I’ll have to check watchOS 26 when it comes out.
Thanks for clarifying. I don’t have an Apple Watch as I still just use old school ones but I see that your issue is a problem. You have to wonder why Apple took that feature away. Maybe submit a report to Apple so they can bring it back.
In addition to my previous post I now want to share a backup disk issue I encountered after upgrading my Intel Mac mini (2018) from Sonoma 14.7.6 to Sequoia 15.5.
I have 2 backup disks dating back to 2022. About every month I switch disks (with the other at my mother’s house). Before I switch disks I run Disk Utility First Aid. This has not caused any issues all those years.
The first time I ran First Aid on my current backup disk after the upgrade to 15.5 it reported a severe error that could not be fixed, advising me to copy the files on the disk and reformatting it. The disk effectively became read only.
I decided to keep the disk as-is and start a new backup on a fresh disk. That all went fine, including running First Aid.
When I switched to my second backup disk exactly the same thing happened! Two disks suddenly going bad giving exactly the same error? That cannot be a coincidence! Something in MacOS Sequoia seems to damage older backup disks, or is incompatible at least. Isn’t the purpose of backups to be able to have access to older files, even from years ago? Why then did Apple break compatibility with older backup disks? I have no idea, but Apple has made me very unhappy and I will now be even more reluctant to install upgrades and updates from Apple.
