How to Fix a Pixel Watch That Won't Turn On

Pixel Watch won't turn on unless there's enough battery power for it to boot up, but a dead battery is just one possible reason your watch isn't working.

Why Won't Pixel Watch Turn On?

Possible reasons your Pixel Watch won't turn on could be:

• Dead battery
• Software bug
• Bad hardware
  

A dead battery is the most likely culprit. If it's not that, consider that you might be pressing the wrong button for power. It's also possible the watch is on, but the screen is black. In this case, it's likely a software bug is preventing the screen from showing anything. Finally, you might be experiencing a physical hardware issue that's out of your control to fix.

How to Fix a Google Pixel Watch Not Turning On

Follow these steps in the order they're given to try the more likely fixes first.

1. Charge the watch. A full charge lasts some users around 24 hours. Any longer and there's a good chance the battery is simply drained.

   If after the watch has been charging for 15 minutes, there's still no indication of power, the charging cable, power source, or charging port on the watch could be damaged. However, try the rest of these steps before concluding this.

2. Are you using the correct power button?

   There are two buttons on Pixel Watch. The crown is the protruding scrolling wheel; this is what you press-and-hold for a few seconds to turn the watch on. The other side button is for accessing recent apps (press once) and Google Assistant (press-and-hold).

3. Restart the watch. A temporary glitch in the software could have been preventing it from displaying things properly.

   Considering that you've already tried Step 2, do a force reboot: take it off your wrist, and hold both the crown and the side button at the same time until you see the Google logo (it could take anywhere from 10 to 60 seconds).

4. Let the watch die completely, and then try charging it. It's possible it's not really off, but a glitch is preventing the screen from lighting up.

   Some users who have experienced a supposed bricked Pixel Watch were able to use it again after letting the battery fully drain. This might be your situation, too, if the screen is black but the watch shows signs of life, like vibrations and flickering light from the heart rate sensor.

5. Reset Pixel Watch. This should fix whatever is causing it to not turn on if the issue is a deep software bug.

   On the Google Pixel Watch app's home screen, scroll down to select System, and then tap Reset and unpair watch.
   

   Unfortunately, this watch doesn't have a physical reset button, so this will work only if it's truly on and just not displaying things properly. It will wipe everything from the watch, and you'll need to set it up again to re-pair it with your phone.

6. Contact Google. You've attempted to charge the battery and reset the software, so all that's left is hardware failure.

   See Google's Hardware Warranty Center if the watch is still under warranty. Assuming the fault isn't your responsibility, you might be able to return it for a refund, exchange, or repair.