Apple Watch: Restarts and overheating after watchOS 26.3 update

Hi there,

I’ve been having ongoing issues with my Apple Watch. Last week I updated it to watchOS 26.3. The next day it accidentally ran out of battery, and since then it has been randomly restarting, showing an overheating message.

I suspected it might be related to the update, so I researched online and on the official Apple forums. People recommended resetting the Apple Watch and unpairing it from my iPhone. I did both procedures, but the problem persists, even when the watch is in a cool environment.

I’ve been using it normally, but it still restarts multiple times a day. Yesterday I even updated to the public beta of watchOS 26.4 hoping it would fix the issue, but it didn’t help — the random restarting continues. Today I also unpaired and paired it again with my iPhone, and the problem is still happening.

This has been very disruptive and frustrating.

I’m following up on my previous message because I’ve found additional diagnostic information that may help identify the cause of the issue.

I accessed the Apple Watch analytics logs and noticed that the restarts appear to be associated with a system process crash, specifically the ActivityMonitorApp (com.apple.ActivityMonitorApp). The log shows an EXC_RESOURCE exception with subtype MEMORY and the message “(Limit 35 MB) Crossed High Water Mark.”

Based on this, it seems the system process exceeded its memory limit and was terminated by the system. This happens shortly before the watch displays the overheating icon and restarts.

This makes me suspect the overheating warning may not be caused by actual temperature, but instead may be related to a software or system issue introduced after the watchOS update.

For reference, the watch is currently running:

watchOS 26.4 (build 23T5209m)

I’d also like to share that I’ve performed some additional troubleshooting steps to help isolate the issue.

Based on the crash logs referencing the ActivityMonitorApp, I removed the Activity rings complication from my main watch face and disabled Activity app notifications as well.

I’ll be monitoring the watch closely today to see if this resolves the issue. If the restarts happen again, I will also try to capture additional logs to provide you with more information.

Apple Watch: Restarts and overheating after watchOS 26.3 update
 
 
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