Deploy Apple Watch
If an Apple Watch with watchOS 10 or later is paired with an iPhone with iOS 17 or later, you can enroll it in a device management service. In this way, the watch supports use cases that not only improve the user’s productivity, but also support their wellness and offer them extra safety benefits.
For more information, see the WWDC23 video Meet device management for Apple Watch.
Enable device management service
To enable the enrollment, the declarative configuration com.apple.configuration.watch.enrollment needs to be applied to a supervised and managed iPhone. After the configuration is applied, any Apple Watch with watchOS 10 can be enrolled in device management when paired. The user can cancel and opt out of management by terminating the pairing flow. If an Apple Watch is already paired, it needs to be removed and paired with the iPhone again to be enrolled.
When the Apple Watch successfully enrolls in a device management service (like the iPhone its paired with), it’s supervised. The device management service can then perform actions like configuring settings, retrieving device information, clearing the passcode, and locking or erasing the Apple Watch.
Install, remove, and update Apple Watch apps using device management commands
You can install, remove, and update App Store apps, Custom Apps, and proprietary in-house apps using existing device management commands on Apple Watch. A device management service can also use the bundle ID of apps that can run on Apple Watch as part of app installation, configuration, and removal commands.
Apple Watch supports the following types of apps:
Paired apps: Apps that share data between itself and its paired iPhone app, but the Apple Watch app can function on its own in the absence of the iPhone app.
Dependent apps: Apps that require the iPhone companion app to be functional.
Standalone apps: Apps that exist only on Apple Watch and have no iPhone companion.
Paired and dependent apps need to be managed together across both devices. When installing paired and dependent apps, the app should be installed and managed on the iPhone first, and then the Apple Watch app can be installed.
Note: During this process, the iPhone needs to be within range of the Apple Watch.
Updating and removing paired and dependent apps needs to be done individually for each device.
To install proprietary in-house apps that don’t have an iPhone version, the following steps need to be completed:
1. Change the.ipa suffix to .zip and uncompress the archive.
2. Locate the Apple Watch .app file inside the uncompressed directory, then move it to a directory named Payload.
3. Compress the payload directory and rename the .zip file AppName.ipa.
Note: If the .ipa file created by Xcode is left wrapped in an empty iPhone app wrapper, the installation fails.
Unenroll Apple Watch from a device management service
You can unenroll Apple Watch from the device management service either manually or by using device management commands independently from the host iPhone. If you unenroll the host iPhone from the service, you also unenroll the paired Apple Watch. Unenrolling causes the Apple Watch to unpair, reset, and erase all content and settings.