Almost every case is the phone-to-ring connection rather than the ring itself. These are in the order that resolves the most cases soonest.
- 1
Check the Oura app's Bluetooth permission
Not whether Bluetooth is on. Whether Oura is allowed to use it. On iOS: Settings, scroll to Oura, confirm Bluetooth is enabled. This is the single most common cause and the app does not always say so clearly.
- 2
Force-quit the app and reopen it
Swipe it away completely, then reopen with the ring on your finger and the phone nearby. Pull down on the home screen to trigger a sync.
- 3
Check the ring actually has charge
A flat ring cannot sync and, unhelpfully, a flat ring also cannot tell you it is flat. Put it on the charger for fifteen minutes and try again before assuming anything is broken.
- 4
Turn on background app refresh
If the symptom is gaps rather than total failure, this is why. Both mobile operating systems suspend background apps aggressively, and Oura needs the permission to catch up without you opening it.
- 5
Restart the phone
Clears the Bluetooth stack issues behind a meaningful share of these, and takes a minute.
- 6
Only then, re-pair or reset
Removing and re-adding the ring resets pairing and permissions, so you will be redoing steps 1 and 4. Keep it as the last resort.
When it is genuinely the ring
If it will not connect to a second phone, if it will not charge at all, or if the battery has collapsed to under a day, that is hardware. Ring batteries are not user-replaceable and do degrade over a few years, which is a normal end of life rather than a fault.
Charging problems specifically have their own set of causes, most of which are the contacts rather than the ring: Oura Ring not charging.
The gap that is not a gap
A missing night in the app is often a sync that has not happened yet rather than a night that was not recorded. Open the app, wait a minute with the ring on, and check again before troubleshooting. The ring holds several days locally for exactly this reason.