It won’t take long until you start to get annoyed by all the Apple Watch notifications. The constant vibrating and alarms throughout the entire day are enough to drive anyone insane. However, Apple gives people who purchased its Watch the ability to customize what sorts of notifications go to the device. Here is what you need to know that will help you manage Apple Watch notifications.
Alerts and Privacy
On your iPhone, open the Apple Watch companion app and go to Notifications. There is a list here with all the services and the apps that make your Watch constantly buzz. There are two very important settings on the top: Notification Privacy and Notifications Indicator. These two settings are turned on by default.
When Notifications Indicator is enabled it will make your watch display a tiny red dot to show you that you have unread notifications. The Notification Privacy setting will keep all your notifications private until the moment you interact with them. Should you want to turn off any of these two, or both of them, simply use the switches to disable them.
Preinstalled App Notifications
The section on top of the Notifications menu is meant for the preinstalled apps on your Apple Watch, like emails, text messages and activity tracker. The notifications from preinstalled apps can be customized to fit your needs, unlike the ones from third party apps that just mirror the notifications you receive on your iPhone.
If you only want to get a buzz when you receive a text message and not a sound alert you should follow these steps. Go to the Notifications menu inside the Apple Watch companion app, tap on Messages, then Custom and finally turn off the sound switch. As another example, if you don’t want to be bothered by the Apple Watch to remind you every hour to stand, simply access Activity and turn off the Stand Reminders.
Third Party App Notifications
The Apple Watch mirrors the notifications automatically from your iPhone by default. This thing can get really, really annoying very fast. I was constantly annoyed by useless notifications from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. To select which notifications you want coming through from your iPhone go to Settings and tap on Notifications.
You can disable all the app notifications you get on the Apple Watch to stop them from appearing at all. Go in the Apple Watch companion app on your iPhone, go to Notifications and scroll to the bottom of the section. There is a list there of all the apps for Apple Watch that you have. All you have to do here is simply disable all the notifications from the apps you don’t want to be bothered by.
I turned off pretty much all the notifications from third party apps, but this might not be the case for you. Make sure you explore in detail the Notifications menu in the Apple Watch companion app and customize all the alerts to fit your needs.
So there you have it. We hope this answers all your questions on how to manage Apple Watch notifications.
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