Apple Watches and iPhones need to be paired when you initially acquire one or when you change phones. Today I'll teach you how to unpair an Apple Watch and back up its data so that you may re-pair it to a different phone.

Pairing an Apple Watch with an iPhone is a piece of cake as straightforward as attaching any other Bluetooth-enabled gadget. However, what if you've recently purchased a new phone? To begin using the Apple Watch, you must first unpair it from your old iPhone and then pair it to the new phone.

How to Unpair an Apple Watch from an Old Phone

You will have to manually unpair your Apple Watch from your old iPhone only if your new iPhone didn’t ask you (when you were setting it up) to use your Apple Watch, or if you have some recent activity data that you haven’t seen in your Health data on your old iPhone and you don’t want to wait for the automatic sync to occur.

Here’s how to unpair your Apple Watch:

1. Open the Watch app on your handset.
2. Tap on the My Watch tab on the lower left side of the display.
3. Tap All Watches and the info button next to the watch you want to unpair.
4. Tap on Unpair Apple Watch.

If you don’t have your old iPhone or you have erased it, there are some different steps that you can do.

Next, create an iCloud backup of your old iPhone then transfer that content to your new iPhone. If you decide to use an iTunes backup instead, make sure to encrypt it so your Health and Activity data is saved and transferred.

Set up your new iPhone

You have to first set up your new device before you can pair the Apple Watch to it. In this step, when prompted whether you have an iCloud or iTunes backup, choose your most recent backup to restore your data from your old device to your new device.

Then, your iPhone will ask you if you want to use your Apple Watch, so tap “Continue”. If it doesn’t ask you, you can still set up your Apple Watch manually.

How to Pair an Apple Watch to a New Phone

1. Now, just as before, pair your Apple Watch with your new iPhone. Here's how to pair the Apple Watch:

2. Open the Watch app on your new iPhone and follow the on-screen directions.

3. When asked, make sure to select Restore from Backup and select the most recent backup to transfer your content back to Apple Watch.

Ta-da! You’ve paired your Apple Watch with a new iPhone!