Watchface Sharing Fails in TestFlight/AppStore on iOS/watchOS 26 (Works in Dev Builds)

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Created 10h

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Hello everyone,

I am facing a critical and blocking issue regarding watchface sharing on iOS/watchOS 26 and would appreciate any immediate guidance or updates from the community or Apple.

The Problem: We are unable to share watchfaces containing any complications from our app in TestFlight and App Store distribution environments. The operation fails with an error indicating the app and complications are unavailable. However, the exact same functionality works perfectly in all development builds (both Debug and Release schemes). This issue was not present on iOS/watchOS 18.

We have testing, including:

Successfully sharing the watchface in development environments.
The failure occurs consistently across TestFlight and App Store builds.
Exporting the watchface configuration from a TestFlight/AppStore build on iOS, transferring it to a paired watch, and finding it still shows as "Unavailable".

We suspect this may be related to the dual-target architecture of Watch apps.

Any guidance or updates would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time and support!

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Answer 1

aaajiulong OP

10h

iOS app share: Group 639.png

watchOS app share: Group 640.png

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Answer 2

aaajiulong OP

5h

We found the solution. For iOS/watchOS 26, you MUST:

Migrate from the legacy Watch dual-target to a single-target.
Generate the watch face file within your TestFlight build and bundle it with your app; do not generate it in a development environment.

This ensures the complications are associated with a valid App Store ID. This strict validation appears to be new in iOS/watchOS 26, as it was not present in iOS/watchOS 18.

Reference: Sharing Apple Watch Faces.

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