How to Backup Your Apple Watch

Your Apple Watches contain all kinds of information that you probably don’t want to lose, so backing it up is important. Your contacts, health data, and more are all stored on your Apple Watch and the health data, in particular, is all absolutely something you can’t replace should it go missing. That’s why backing everything up is vital.

But we have good news, your Apple Watch is easy to backup, yet you can’t manually back up your Apple Watch! Wait, that’s bad news isn’t it? No – let us explain.

The reason it’s good news is because your Apple Watch handles all backing up duties automatically, without any need for manual intervention.

In fact, your Apple Watch data is backed up to your iPhone.

And you do already back up your iPhone, don’t you? Whether you use iCloud or a cable, backing up your iPhone also backs up your Apple Watch.

Apple Watch Backups Automatically to iPhone, so Backing up iPhone will Backup Apple Watch

In other words, as long as your Apple Watch is synced to your iPhone, and you backup that iPhone, then your Apple Watch is automatically backed up as well.

There’s a ton of stuff that gets backed up, too. Apple details everything that is kept safe and sound via an iPhone backup in a support article. But not everything is backed up. There are four things that aren’t.

• Bluetooth pairing settings.
• Cards added to Apple Pay.
• The passcode assigned to your Apple Watch.
• Messages.

How Often Are Apple Watch Backups Taken?

For all intents of purposes, it’s constantly happening. Data is always being taken from an Apple Watch and being fed to the iPhone to which it’s paired. That ensures that data is always up-to-date across both devices. It also means you won’t lose anything, too. An iPhone will automatically back everything – Apple Watch data included – to iCloud overnight when it is charging.

There is one circumstance where a backup of all data is initiated manually, though. Any time an Apple Watch is reset and unpaired from an iPhone, a full backup is created on the iPhone. That way Apple ensures that all data is immediately available in the instance of someone upgrading their Apple Watch to the new hotness. Something Apple is obviously very keen on happening!

In many ways, the Apple Watch is the culmination of Apple’s attempts to make sure backing up is absolutely seamless. It really is for all intents and purposes and doubly so if an iPhone is backed up to iCloud, too. Make sure that’s happening and you’re golden.

And yes, you can restore Apple Watch from these backups if you ever need to.