Pairing Apple Watch without two-factor authentication.

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Level 1

12 points

Pairing Apple Watch without two-factor authentication.

I just upgraded to a new iPhone and transferred all of my data from my old iPhone and everything is working perfectly. But when I try to setup my Apple Watch (which was previously paired with my old iPhone running iOS 15 and WatchOS 8), I was asked to reset the watch to factory defaults first, then continue pairing. On the iPhone my apps were still downloading in the background, even first party apps including the Apple Watch app and were taking a lot of time, so I thought I’d pair it later and pressed cancel pairing. Now when I try to pair it, it’s being read as a new watch and I have to enable 2FA in order to pair it, and I can’t do that as my country isn’t listed when I try to add a phone number. Is there any way to do that without 2FA?

Apple Watch Series 5

Posted on Jan 17, 2025 11:43 PM

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Answer 1

LD150

Level 10

91,819 points

Jan 18, 2025 3:21 AM in response to Ballani_J

2FA is attached to your Apple account. It is created as soon as you sign into any device on a new account.

In all countries except USA it is compulsory.

You may have reset your watch but that does not remove activation lock on the old account. You will have to sign into the account that is on the watch and remove the watch from the account. If there are no trusted devices signed into that account you will have to sign into https://icloud.com/find which doesn't need 2FA code response.

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