Wear OS 5.1 seems to be dragging down several Pixel Watch users with multiple bugs

nandika.iyerravi@futurenet.com (Nandika Ravi)
2025-03-24 13:09:00
www.androidcentral.com

What you need to know

Wear OS 5.1 update seems to be messing up some features on the Pixel Watch 3 and Watch 2.
Users have reported delayed notifications, inaccurate step counts, battery issues, and more.
While Google has yet to acknowledge the bugs, restarting or factory resetting the wearable seems to temporarily fix some of the issues.

The March Wear OS update is rolling out, and it has already started causing some issues for users. The Wear OS 5.1 update seems to be delaying notifications, inaccurately showing steps, causing battery issues, and more (first spotted by Android Police).

Since Mar. 18, Google has been pushing out the Wear OS 5.1 update for the Pixel Watch 3, Pixel Watch 2, and the original Pixel Watch. The broader rollout to LTE watches happened last week, with the LTE Pixel Watch 2 and 3 seeing version BP1A.250305.019.W3 and the O.G device seeing BP1A.250305.019.W2 version of the update come in.

At the start of March, Google announced the feature rollout to wearables, with the new Loss of Pulse and menstrual health support coming to the Pixel Watch 3. Other watches received tweaks to features that improved audio controls, step count tracking, and expansion of auto bed-time mode.

The MyFitnessPal app on the Google Pixel Watch 3 — (Image credit: Derrek Lee / Android Central)

But it looks like the patch brought some unexpected bugs as well to these watches. Over the weekend, those who updated their watch to the latest firmware seem to be facing all kinds of issues with their wearables. Several people took to Reddit to express their frustration about this rather messy update that has made their watches slower than usual.

Several Pixel Watch 2 and Pixel Watch 3 owners reported that notifications seemed to be delayed and were only displayed when the user manually wakes the watch, after which they are flooded by multiple notifications all at once.

Other users feel that the update has messed up their step counter — the watch seems to be counting steps and detecting floors climbed, even when the user has taken it off. It also seems to be detecting way more steps than usual, according to another user who said they only walked 5K steps, but the watch seems to have tracked about 17K.

Additionally, these bugs have supposedly started draining the watch’s battery. The publication added that some users have been dealing with the watch crashing when all they did was try to change or edit a watch face’s complications or colors.

For now, users on the same Reddit thread seem to have come up with a workaround to solve this issue. They said factory resetting the watch seems to be solving some of these issues, while some feel that simply restarting the watch does the job, but only temporarily.

A photo of the Google Pixel Watch 3 showing thick black bars over the display, indicating that the display uses PWM dimming.

(Image credit: Michael Hicks / Android Central)

On the other hand, some users thanked the Google gods as they didn’t face any of the above issues with the new update. For now, Google hasn’t officially acknowledged the issue. However, Android Central has reached out to the company and will update this article once we have more information.

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