Thanks to its excellent hardware and feature-packed software, the Galaxy Watch4 is one of the best smartwatches you can buy. Sadly, Wear OS has one flaw that can be particularly annoying — having to factory reset the watch when you want to connect it to a new phone. Making this process even worse is an unskippable "welcome to your watch" tour that greets you when the watch has connected to your new phone. Thankfully, a recent update has made the whole ordeal easier.

Yesterday when swapping my Watch4 from one phone to the other, I was delighted to see that once the watch had finished pairing to my new device, it presented me with an option — start the tour or skip it. I know this sounds like an insignificant change, but I can assure you it isn't. The tour in question teaches you to navigate the entire UI, which is helpful if you are new to the platform but useless if you've used it before. What's worse is that the tutorial is sluggish — something I've observed on every Wear OS device I've used, not just the Watch4.

While it's frustrating that we still have to factory reset our watches to swap phones, this is a big step in the right direction for those who hop between phones regularly — or even only once when switching to a new phone.

A new update (via SamMobile) started to reach devices at the beginning of this month, and I believe this is the one that made the change. I reset my Watch4 in March when my Galaxy S22 Ultra arrived, and I didn't have the option to skip it. But now, after installing the most recent update, I can do so. If your Watch4 has been updated, you should be good to go the next time you want to swap to a different phone. Hopefully, this is something that will eventually reach all Wear OS devices and not just Samsung's.