How to clear the cache on Fossil Gen5 or Gen6 Wear OS smartwatch

If your Fossil smartwatch’s battery life suddenly decreases, you start receiving low storage warnings, or your watch’s storage is full, clearing your watch’s cache might just help alleviate one or all of these problems.

When your watch storage is full, it can cause it to run slowly, crash, and your installed Apps to freeze. 

Your watch’s application caches grow over time. Some commonly installed apps such as Facebook and Facebook messenger can even create a cache that fills up your watch’s storage space.

The good news is that cleaning out the cache frees up space on your Fossil Gen watch and often helps improve your battery’s performance and life between charges.

Clear your Fossil smartwatch app caches for better battery and storage performance!

Follow all the steps below to clear the app cache on your Fossil Wear OS smartwatch. 

Please note that this process works for Wear OS watches, not Wear OS 3 watches.

1. First, check the storage on your watch

 See if you can identify the apps using a lot of storage on your watch and then delete any unused apps.

1. Open the Wear OS app on your paired phone. 
2. Tap Advanced settings. 
3. Scroll down and tap Watch storage.
4. View your watch storage graph and storage available.
   1. If your storage is near full, scroll down and look through the list of apps. Note any apps that you don’t use or regularly use that take a significant amount of storage.
   2. To delete an app from your Fossil watch, open the Play Store app on your watch and scroll down and tap My Apps. Tap the app you wish to remove, scroll to the bottom, and tap Uninstall.
   3. You cannot delete apps using the Wear OS app on your phone.

2. Clear your Fossil watch’s app cache

1. On your watch, choose Settings.
2. Tap Apps & notifications > App info. 
3. Locate the app that you want to clear its cache.
   1. If not listed, tap System Apps and look for any Google apps and system apps.
4. Scroll down and choose App info.
5. Scroll down and tap Clear cache.
6. Wait for an on-screen confirmation message that the cache is cleared.
   1. Not all apps offer this option.
7. Repeat for any additional apps.

One note of warning, pay attention that you select Clear cache NOT Clear data.

In particular, you don’t want clear data on the Google Play Services app as that’s causing pairing problems with Wear OS (your phone might no longer recognize your watch.) 

However, it’s perfectly fine to clear cached data from Google Play Services since that removes temporary files.

3. Clear the Wear OS app cache

1. Open the phone’s Settings > Apps. 
2. Tap Wear OS by Google. 
3. Choose Storage & cache.
4. Tap the option to Clear cache.
5. When the cache clears, the option grays out and shows a cache of 0.

4. Restart your phone and your watch

Finally, restart both your phone and watch. Start with your phone, then your watch.

Clear your Fossil Gen 5 using Recovery mode

If clearing your apps didn’t work, you can try using the built-in Recovery mode menu and clear your watch’s entire cache.

1. Press and hold the watch’s Digital Crown button (the middle button) AND the lower button until your watch completely shuts down, restarts, and then vibrates. 
2. Wait for Fastboot Mode to appear on your watch’s screen. Release all the buttons.
3. Look at the top of your screen, and locate the word Start.
4. Quickly press the Digital Crown (middle button) a few times to change that option until you see Recovery Mode at the top of your watch’s screen.
5. Press and hold (long press) the Digital Crown to go to recovery mode.
   1. Release when your watch’s screen goes black.
   2. If it worked, you should show a screen that says “No command!” If you don’t repeat the previous steps.
6. Swipe down from the top of your watch’s screen a few times to access the Wipe cache partition option.
   1. If you pass it, swipe up from the bottom of your watch’s screen to find it again.
7. Swipe left or right on Wipe cache partition to select it.
8. Swipe up or down to choose Yes, then swipe left or right to perform the cache wipe.
9. Once your watch clears the cache partition, swipe left or right on Reboot system now to restart your watch.

Here are a few tips to get the best watch performance!

Even if you went through all these steps and cleared your watch’s cache partition, you still might find your battery isn’t performing as you expected.

• Use a different watch face if your current face includes many things that need to be updated or animation, which drains your battery. So try something a bit more basic.
• Don’t have your watch’s display always on. Open Settings > Display and turn off Always on-screen.
• Set the lowest screen brightness that works for you. The brighter you set your watch’s screen, the faster its battery drains. Find these settings in Settings > Display > Adjust Brightness.
• Limit which apps send you notifications, so you only get what you need. Change this in the Wear OS app > Settings > Notifications > Change watch notifications.
  • Toggle off any apps that you don’t need to see notifications for on your watch.
• Open the Wear OS app to see more details about how your watch uses its battery via Settings > Advanced settings > Watch battery. Review the apps that significantly use your watch’s battery. If you don’t use a listed app, uninstall it from your watch.
• Uninstall any third-party apps that you don’t use. In particular, if you don’t use a fitness or health app on your watch, we suggest uninstalling it or, if that’s not possible, removing upgrades. This includes apps like Google Fit, Strava, Nike Run Club, Adidas Running, Runtastic, and so forth that need constant access to your watch’s sensors.

Unfortunately, Wear OS and Fossil smartwatches include a lot of unnecessary bloatware. If your watch isn’t performing as you want, it might be worth the time and effort to take a look and see what apps you can uninstall or remove upgrades.

• Go to Settings > Apps & Notifications > App Info > System Apps and see which apps and services you can disable to help decrease bloatware.
• More advanced users that feel comfortable mucking around can use ADB, developer options, and ADB debugging to remove bloatware. We won’t get into that here because it’s risky for the everyday watch user.

Final thoughts

A few weeks ago, I did this on my Fossil Wear OS Gen 5 Caryle model after an update caused some battery performance problems. And I can attest that clearing cache did indeed help!

I hope this article helped you clear the cache on your Fossil smartwatch.

If you have any more questions or anything to add, please let us and everyone else know about it in the comments section down below!

If you liked this article, follow us on social media by using the social media buttons!