How to fix a Pixel Watch stuck on Fastboot

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Posted on . Reading time: 5 mins. Tags: google, pixel-watch, smartwatch.

My Pixel Watch 2 started randomly dying and eventually got stuck on a Fastboot screen. Factory resets didn’t help, and Google Support shrugged it off (out of warranty, of course). Determined to fix it myself, I downloaded Google’s official OS image, used ADB via the charger cable, and successfully flashed the watch back to life.

Sergi Pons Freixes

I am the owner of a Pixel Watch 2. During the past months, approximately once a week, the battery would suddenly deplete very quickly. For example, I would charge it overnight, put it on around 8am, and when checking the time at 2pm I would find out it was almost dead (or already dead). If I caught this happening before the device died, a reboot would fix it and the watch would keep working as expected. To put it in perspective, a regular full charge lasts me more than 24 hours; it can probably reach 36.

I tried looking online for a permanent solution but didn't find anything. I thought about reaching out to Google for support, but because of laziness, I never did. I ended up regretting that because when this behavior started it was probably still under warranty.

Around the end of February, it happened again. I went to check the time and found out the watch was dead, only showing the icon of empty battery. I plugged it in, and a few hours later, when I went to sleep, I grabbed it with the intention to put it on and... I got greeted by what's called the Fastboot screen.

The Fastboot screen is a menu with options like Start, Power Off, Recovery Mode, Device Info, etc. All the options I tried that would reboot the device would bring me back to that menu. I was stuck there.

Inside the Recovery Mode, there is the option of Wipe data/Factory reset. Even that did not fix the issue. Interestingly, when I triggered that option, an error message would show up with:

ERROR: recovery: [libfs_mgr] Unable to enable ext4 verity on /dev/block/bootdevice/by-name/metadata because /system/bin/tune2fs is missing

ERROR: recovery: Open failed: /metadata/ota: No such file or directory

Formatting /data...

After that, I could reboot the system, but that would load again the Fastboot.

I reached out to Google support. After trying to make me repeat the steps that I had just done, I explained to them I had already done that and shared with them the error message I was getting. Their answer was short of "Too bad. There is nothing you can do then, and as the device is out of warranty we are not gonna give you a new one."

I've had two Fitbit devices that died soon after the warranty expired, so with that now happening to the Pixel Watch (warranty expired 2 months before this incident), I was fuming.

A few days later, I kept researching. I found out you can download images of the OS, officially from Google, and that you can use the charger cable to flash the watch with them. Heck, what did I have to lose?

So that I did. Using the Watch app on my phone, I identified what build of the OS I was running before. Then I downloaded the corresponding image from the repository of full OTA images for Google Pixel Watch devices. I am not sure of the difference between OTA images and factory images, but all the posts I found online always pointed to the OTA ones.

Next, I installed the Platform-Tools for Google Android SDK. Nowadays, I use Arch Linux, so I downloaded them from AUR. This package includes adb, aka Android Debug Bridge, which allows you to communicate with Android devices.

Then, on the watch, using the Fastboot menu, I went to Recovery mode, and triggered the option Apply update from ADB. Then, I plugged the watch into the computer with the charger cable and checked that the device was recognized by executing:

adb devices

This listed my watch, so I started flashing the image with:

adb sideload aurora-ota-aw2a.241105.012-a7c5bc2d.zip

That showed me a progress report. This part was a little nerve-breaking because the charger attaches to the watch mostly with magnets, not a physical attachment, so it's very easy to unplug it, and I was worried that a disconnection mid-flashing could completely brick the device.

Fortunately, none of that happened. The flashing finished, the watch rebooted, and it was as good as new! After pairing it again with my phone it downloaded the latest online backup and all my apps and settings were re-applied.

I'm very happy that I could fix it, but at the same time, I am deeply disappointed that Google support did not inform me of this option. Either they lied by telling me there was nothing I could do about it, or they are insufficiently trained to do their job.