How To Manage Notifications on Apple Watch

While Apple Watch is a great fitness companion, it is also a great companion to your iPhone. With Notifications, Apple Watch can deliver what’s most important at a glance, and hide away what is not. Unfortunately, you do have to put in a bit of time (and patience) to manage notifications on Apple Watch.

Today, we are going to take a look at setting up and personalizing notifications on Apple Watch, as well as discuss how Apple could improve the experience.

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Check Out Our Video on Apple Watch Notifications

Manage Notifications on Apple Watch

The best way to set up notifications on Apple Watch is via the Watch app on iOS. Launch the app and select ‘Notifications.’

Here, you’ll see some options, including some settings, Apple Watch functions, and apps on your phone.

The first option is the notification indicator. Sliding this on will result in a red dot appearing at the top of your watch face when you have unread notifications.

The second is notification privacy. With this feature, Apple Watch will still use vibrations to tap your wrist for notifications. However, it will only reveal the information if you touch the screen. This way, you could avoid showing personal information in a public setting accidentally.

Using watchOS 5? 

Check out our article on how to manage and use notifications with watchOS 5.

It’s a game-changer for notifications on the Apple Watch!

Setting Up Your Apple Watch Specific Notifications

Following these options, you’ll see a list of watch specific apps that need fine tuning when it comes to notifications.

The first of these is Activity. Within this setting, you could toggle things like stand reminders, progress, updates, and achievements.

The second is Breath, which allows you to set the reminders, mute it for a specific duration, and more.

The clock settings allow you to create a monogram and turn on features like Time Travel, which allows you to fast forward or rewind information on your watch face by turning the digital crown.

Other apps include things like Maps, which allows you to get tapped whenever a turn is coming up.

Manage Notifications on Apple Watch From Third Party Apps

All other apps can be set below this list, each including a toggle. Toggling on an app will send its notifications to the watch when your iPhone is not in use, off will not.

Going through this list is the key to making the Apple Watch valuable.

By only selecting apps that are important to you, you could make sure always to get what you need, while leaving the less important info on the iPhone for later review.

watchOS 5 brings quite a few changes to how it handles third-party notifications–so check out this article for more details about the changes watchOS 5 brings to your Apple Watch today.

Improvements To Apple Watch Notifications

While the Apple Watch does a great job with Notifications, it could improve in the future.

Final Thoughts

One thing I would like to see added is deeper customize third-party apps. Maybe I do want to be notified when someone tags me in a Facebook post, but not when someone comments on my post. By allowing third parties to tag and customize notifications, power users could create a truly great Notification Center.

Another thing I would like to see is better support for responding to notifications from the watch. As it stands, you can’t do anything with the watch if the notification’s app watch companion isn’t on the watch besides get notifications. At the very least, I’d like to see a way for the scribble feature for responding to iMessages brought over to all messaging apps on the Watch.

Lastly, a small thing, but it would be nice if Apple Watch could group together notifications by an app in the Notification Center. As it stands, you just get a long scrolling view in which you can see 1 & 1/8 notifications at a time.

Overall, Notifications on Apple Watch is one of my favorite features, and is pretty good as is. If you haven’t had the chance to see it in action, I’d highly recommend visiting an Apple Store and trying one on. It’s really something special.

Binyamin Goldman( Senior Writer )

Binyamin has been writing about Apple and the tech sector as a whole for over five years.

His work has been featured on Forbes, MacWorld, Giga, MacLife, and more.

Additionally, Goldman is the Founder of BZG, a software development company focusing on Apple devices.

Currently a Senior Writer at AppleToolbox, Goldman has written for Updato and Inside Pulse and was a founding member of WatchAware and Mulling Apple.