The Apple Watch Series 7 was officially released yesterday, October 15th, and already the device has its first bug. An iOS and Mac app developer by the name of James Thomson took to his Twitter account to reveal that some app icons were not showing up on the Series 7 timepiece. This was not an issue on older Apple Watch models nor did the bug manifest itself on the Series 7 simulator in Xcode.
Thomson, who is the developer behind the Pcalc and Dice apps, said that the problem was fixed on the server-side. There is a workaround available. Removing apps missing their icons and reinstalling them will bring back the missing images. Or, you could switch the app view to list. The icons will still be missing, but at least you’ll see the name of each app and know
Apple Watch Series 7 bug prevents some app icons from appearing
While at this point we can only guess what caused the issue, the number one suspect is the larger screen sizes on the two models. Apple hiked the size of the Apple Watch screens making them 1mm taller at 41mm and 45mm. This gives the new timepieces a higher pixel count. Since the issue seems limited to the Series 7 models only, blaming the larger screens for the disappearing app icons makes sense.
Thompson also recalled a similar problem that plagued Series 4 owners back in 2018. 32-bit watch apps wouldn’t load on their 64-bit Apple Watch Series 4 devices if they were paired to an iPhone 6s Pro. Eventually, developers whose apps were affected had to submit and release a new version of their apps. Whether or not Series 7 app developers will need to do the same thing is not yet clear.
