Apple Watch content backs up automatically to your companion iPhone, so you can restore your Apple Watch from a backup. When you back up your iPhone to iCloud or your computer, your iPhone backup also includes your Apple Watch data. If you've set up an Apple Watch for a family member, its data is backed up to iCloud directly.
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 and units, as well as your settings for Mail, Calendar, Stocks and weather.
- App layout on the Home screen
- Clock face settings, including your current watch face, customisations and order
- Dock settings, including the order, whether you sort by favourites or recents, and available apps
- General system settings, such as brightness, sound and haptic settings
- Health and Fitness data, such as history, awards 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 backup on your computer.)
- Notification settings
- Playlists, albums and mixes that are synced to your Apple Watch and your Music settings
- The Siri Voice Feedback setting 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 that are used for Apple Pay on your Apple Watch
- Passcode for your Apple Watch
- Messages*
When you unpair your Apple Watch from your iPhone, your iPhone automatically creates a backup of your Apple Watch. Unpairing will erase all data from your Apple Watch. If your Apple Watch is unpaired while out of range of your iPhone, the backup may not have the latest data. When you're ready, you can pair your Apple Watch again and set it up from a backup.
* If your devices use iCloud and Messages in iCloud, your iMessages and text (SMS) and multimedia (MMS) messages are stored in iCloud automatically.