Hi everyone,
I wasn’t sure whether to reply to an older thread or start a new one, so I’ll just share my experience here.
I ran into an issue where my TicWatch Pro 3 GPS suddenly stopped connecting to the Home Assistant Companion app via Bluetooth. Interestingly, it still worked fine over Wi-Fi.
After quite a bit of digging, I traced the problem to “Private DNS” being enabled on the watch. It seems Wear OS was forcing all DNS queries through Google’s servers (8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4), breaking local network resolution. Disabling Private DNS resolved the issue, but unfortunately, the option isn’t exposed in the UI on this watch.
ADB is required to change it, but the stock USB cable lacks the data pins needed for USB debugging. I tried making a custom cable but failed to make it work.
Eventually, I found a workaround on XDA using an app called Bugjaeger Mobile ADB, which lets you connect to your watch over Wi-Fi ADB, so no custom cable was needed. I followed setup steps from this XDA Help thread (search for Bugjeager Mobile ADB and click on the 2nd result) and then ran the ADB command from this Github link.
After doing that, the Companion app works perfectly again over both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
What’s odd is that everything worked fine for a long time, until I encountered a duplicate device error in Home Assistant related to my phone and watch. After resolving that, this DNS issue suddenly appeared. Thankfully I was able to fix it.
Hope this helps someone else running into the same weird issue, though I think that typing this was a waste.