The Apple Watch is a pretty cool device, but much like other iOS devices and even your Mac, there may be times when apps misbehave or aren’t working quite the way you expect them to. While Apple has made the process of forcibly terminating apps pretty straightforward on the iPhone and iPad — just open up the app switcher and swipe the offending app away — when you want to forcibly quit something on the Apple Watch, the process is a bit more obscure, involving button presses that hearken back to the days before the iOS App Switcher.
If you find an app on your Apple Watch becomes unresponsive, or doesn’t open properly, simply hold down the side button while the app is running until the Power/Lock options screen appears, and then release the side button and hold it down again until you return to the home screen — you should see the last view of your app briefly appear before zooming back out to the sea of home screen icons. You should then be able to simply restart the app again from the home screen as you normally would.
