Apple Watch ECG doesn’t play nice with beta software
If you're an Apple nerd (like me), and you occasionally worry that an errant beat of your very unhealthy heart might send you to oblivion (like me), you were probably anticipating the release of the ECG feature for the S4 Apple Watch. You also may have been running the developer beta for iOS 12 still (like me), and were greatly confused when you eagerly downloaded WatchOS 5.1.2 only to find yourself stumped.
Sure, the ECG app was visible on your watch. Sure, it seemed to open just fine without crashing. But, maybe (like me) you were greeted by a strange prompt: "To set up ECG, open the Health app on your iPhone."
Sure enough, I did what my watch had instructed and nothing happened. I tried quitting the Health app and reopening it; unpairing and repairing my watch; restarting my watch; restarting my iPhone — nothing seemed to be working.
I went on a deep dive into some of the forums like CNET, Macstories, iFixit, and so on. I couldn't find anything to indicate what I might be doing wrong. I started to panic, which I'm sure wasn't good for my aforementioned very unhealthy ticker.
I found the solution pretty deep in the comments section of idownloadblog — a website I'd never heard of before today.
User Adrian commented:
You have to upgrade your iPhone software to 12.1.1, then you will be able to set up the ECG app.
Well, I was running iOS 12.1.1. So something else had to be going wrong. Another user had replied to the comment with the missing piece of the puzzle. He just so happened to also go by the name Adrian — funny coincidence.
Adrian 2 responds
I was using a beta of 12.1.1, once I deleted the public beta profile it updated to the correct version of 12.1.1 ... [sic] ir all works now
Sure enough, Adrian 2 was right. I deleted my beta profile which can be found pretty easily under the general tab in Settings on your iPhone — especially if you use the search function in Settings that I mentioned in my last post.
Now I'm happy as a lark knowing that if my most overworked organ gives up on a post-2016-election world, I'll at least get a haptic notification first.
What the fuck do you mean I have EVERYTHING OPEN ALREADY