What to Do If Your Apple Watch Gets Stolen

While its unlikely that your Apple Watch will ever get stolen, especially if you wear it on your wrist constantly, there’s always that chance. Here’s what to do if your Apple Watch gets stolen.

The Apple Watch is a bit different when it comes to theft. First of all, it’s a lot harder to steal an Apple Watch since it’s a device that’s actually worn on your wrist, rather than just placed in a pocket or a purse. Frankly, it’s a lot easier to steal an iPhone.

However, getting your Apple Watch stolen is something that could happen, especially if you take it off briefly and set it down somewhere, or maybe you put it in your bag during a commute. Granted, some people where their Apple Watch 24/7, but other users don’t.

Read: Apple Watch Review

If you discover that your Apple Watch is stolen, there’s not as much action that you can take compared to a stolen iPhone, but there are still a few things to keep in mind when your Apple Watch does go missing.

Update to WatchOS 2

While this isn’t something you can really do after the fact, updating your Apple Watch to WatchOS 2 adds Activation Lock to your wearable, which makes it impossible for someone else to unpair your Apple Watch from your iPhone or pair and use your Apple Watch with a new iPhone without knowing your Apple ID password.

Before WatchOS 2, anyone could steal your Apple Watch and easily pair it with their own iPhone without any further action required, which was pretty scary, but now that the Apple Watch has Activation Lock, it hopefully lowers the temptation for thieves to steal your smartwatch.

“Find My Apple Watch”

A great tool that you can use to track a stolen iPhone or iPad is Find My iPhone, which lets you see the location of your stolen iPhone if the thief didn’t turn off or disable data and GPS. If they did, then your iPhone will at least send you the last known location of your device, hopefully making it easier to locate.

However, Find My Apple Watch doesn’t exist because the smartwatch itself isn’t equipped with GPS, so there would be no way of knowing where your stolen Apple Watch is located.

This kind of a bummer, but it isn’t too surprising, and until future models of the Apple Watch come with built-in GPS, we likely won’t see a Find My Apple Watch app for the Apple Watch.

Mark It As Missing in the Apple Watch App

If you open up the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and tap on Apple Watch at the top, you’ll see a button that you can press called Mark as Missing.

When you press this button, a couple of things happen (via Apple’s website):

• Disables Apple Pay cards on your Apple Watch.
• Keeps Activation Lock enabled on your Apple Watch, even if someone erases your watch. Your Apple ID and password will be required to pair your Apple Watch again.

Those are two pretty important features that you’ll want enabled when your Apple Watch is stolen, so keep this in mind if the moment ever arises.

Go to the Police & File a Report

Since you can’t track your Apple Watch’s location after it’s stolen, the least you can do is go to the police and file a report.

Give them as much information as possible, including the serial number of your Apple Watch, which can be found in the Apple Watch app by going to General > About.

Unless you know who stole your Apple Watch or where it’s at, the police will be unlikely to help you, but at least you have an official report that you can use for insurance if you need to.

Answer Calls on the Apple Watch

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You can answer a call on your Apple Watch using it as a small Bluetooth speakerphone. You only want to use this for shorter calls because the audio quality isn't as good as when you are talking on speakerphone on your iPhone.  The Apple Watch only allows you to answer your calls on Speakerphone, so you won't want to use this all the time. It is very handy when you are working on a project or busy with your hands. Definitely be conscious of where you are taking calls. If you wouldn't talk on speakerphone, you shouldn't talk on your Apple Watch. If you buy the new Apple Watch with LTE, you can even make calls on the Apple Watch without your iPhone nearby. This requires adding the watch to your plan for $10 a month. You cannot answer a FaceTime video call on the Apple Watch.

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