An issue with Samsung’s Galaxy Wearable app has broken Galaxy Watch support for many Google Pixel owners as well as some Samsung owners too.

Samsung runs all of its wearable accessories through the Galaxy Wearable app and has plugins for each device. If you have a Galaxy Watch 6, you’ll download that plugin, and if you’re pairing Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, you’ll download a different plugin. It’s a bit messy, but it generally gets the job done.

But, suddenly, those apps are broken for a lot Pixel users.

Several reports have surfaced via Reddit of Google Pixel owners finding that the Galaxy Wearable app is not working for Galaxy Watch devices following the January 2024 update that hit Pixels yesterday. Oddly, this only seems to affect Galaxy Watch devices, and not earbuds in the Wearable app. The issue affects all of Samsung’s Wear OS smartwatches – Galaxy Watch 4, Watch 5, and Watch 6.

Not being able to access the app wouldn’t be a huge problem, but the real issue here is that this is leaving Galaxy Watch unable to stay connected to Google Pixel devices. Affected users report that their smartwatch says it is disconnected and unable to reconnect.

While the issue seems to have been triggered by the latest Google Pixel update, it seems more likely that a Samsung app update will fix the problem, as that’d be the fastest fix. Otherwise, users would be left waiting until February for a fix from Google.

Samsung and Google have yet to respond to the problem, though, so it’s unclear when a fix might arrive.

Notably too, it’s not just Pixel owners facing issues. In what may or may not be a separate issue – user reports are conflicting here – the Galaxy Wearable app is having problems on other devices, including Samsung’s own phones. The issue leaves the app either crashing or spinning infinitely, but some users report success in fixing it by rolling their phone’s date back to 2023 (which we don’t advise, as it’s a temporary fix anyway and has other ill effects). The two issues are very likely connected, but the problem appeared on Pixels immediately after the latest update arrived and seems to be reported far more by Pixel owners.

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