This morning I bought my first-ever Apple Watch for the sole purpose of development and proceeded to spend six hours failing at the first step of development: getting the device to enter developer mode and connect to Xcode.
Since I'm not seeing any WatchOS 11 posts on this issue, it might just be me. This is why I'm making a new thread that's specific to WatchOS 11, Xcode 16, and maybe Series 10.
Some particulars for my case:
Overall
__Followed Xcode 16.0 documentation
On a watchOS device that you use for development, go to Settings > Privacy > Developer Mode. To toggle Developer mode, use the Developer Mode switch.
To pair an Apple Watch to a Mac, connect its companion iPhone to the Mac with a cable, and ensure that the iPhone is paired for development. After this step, follow any instructions on the Apple Watch to trust the Mac. When paired through an iPhone running iOS 17 or later, Xcode connects to the Apple Watch over Wi-Fi
__Tried all the folk remedies listed in the (many) previous posts on enabling development mode and connecting to Xcode
iOS 18.0
__In developer mode
__Connected to macOS via USB, trusts computer
WatchOS 11.0
__Prompt to trust computer appears and trust is established
__‘Developer Mode’ list item never appears at end of the ‘Privacy’ menu under ‘Settings’
__‘Developer’ item sometimes appears at the end of ‘Settings’
- Despite never having seen or toggled ‘Developer Mode’ under ‘Privacy’
- Persists across reboots
- Possible that WatchOS 11 eliminated the item under Settings > Privacy? If so, documentation not up to date
Xcode 16.0
__Watch never appears under ‘Manage Run Destinations’
- After installing sample app to phone, then attempting to install WatchOS app via iOS Watch app, “Cannot install at this time” alert appears
- App icon appears on watch, and tapping on it leads to an alert with, “This app cannot be installed because its integrity could not be verified”, despite wi-fi working
- Watch apps for other apps (e.g. Apple Store) can be successfully installed via iOS Watch app
- Above suggests the watch isn't truly in developer mode despite Settings > Developer appearing and persisting across reboots
__The network path from Xcode to WatchOS should be clear
- Reconfigured router such that devices on the same network can talk to each other
- iPad and iPhone appear with network icon when not connected via cable and Xcode can run code on them
- Watch on same network as iPad and iPhone
macOS 15.0
__Due to security policy, cannot use Wi-Fi (disabled both physically and via sudo /usr/sbin/networksetup -setnetworkserviceenabled 'Wi-Fi' off)
- Possible that Xcode can only establish a connection to WatchOS via Wi-Fi and not via ethernet bridged to wifi. If so, a confirmation would be hugely helpful.
- This is currently my prime suspect. Wi-fi cannot be re-enabled, so I'm trying workarounds like connecting watch to phone's hotspot (doesn't work) and somehow using phone to provide network to the Mac.
__Due to security policy, firewall configured to block all incoming connections
- Shouldn't be an issue since Xcode doesn't need incoming connections to see non-watch devices
__Due to security policy, mDNSResponder and mDNSResponderHelper disabled
- Also shouldn't be an issue, but including just in case
The issue has been resolved.
For posterity, Xcode must have access to both wifi and bluetooth to detect the watch and make the Settings > Privacy & Security > Developer Mode list item appear. If there's no bluetooth, the list item never appears, but the Settings > Developer menu item will appear on its own despite the user never having toggled or even seen the Developer Mode list item.
This should be considered a bug, but is an edge case.
The documentation should make it clear that Bluetooth must be enabled on macOS in its "Enabling Developer Mode on a device" article.
Since Bluetooth availability was the key, tethering and other wifi-based workarounds were ineffective.