Is your Apple Watch 12 or Ultra 4 randomly restarting? Here’s the fix

Apple has released watchOS 27.0.1 to address random restarts reported on the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4. The update was released late Wednesday, according to ZDNET.

ZDNET's author reported experiencing the issue twice on a Series 12, both times while adjusting a setting on the watch, which shut down and restarted without warning. The report says other owners have encountered the same problem.

A discussion thread on Apple's Support Community describes the experience of some owners of either watch model. The person who started that discussion said they checked the diagnostic logs after a sudden restart and found an entry for a panic-full file referring to a timeout in the Neural Engine. According to the report, the Neural Engine is hardware on the watch designed to process tasks related to AI, security and other features, and the timeout causes the watch to restart itself.

Apple's support page for watchOS 27.0.1 refers to bug fixes in the plural, so there may be other fixes included. The report states that for now the update is apparently limited to the Series 12 and Ultra 4. The author installed the update and said it was too soon to tell whether it resolves the problem.

To check diagnostic logs, the report says to open the Watch app on an iPhone, go to General, swipe down the screen and select Diagnostics Logs, then look for a panic-full file. To update, open the Watch app, go to General, select Software Update and download 27.0.1, or go to Settings, General and Software Update directly on the watch.