Hello, Guys welcome back to How to fine-tune notifications on your Apple Watch easy way. The Apple Watch does not need to notify you of everything that your iPhone does. You can instead choose to view only what’s important — or nothing at all.
If you don’t do anything about it, and you’re not using your iPhone at the time, your Apple Watch will notify you. They will be at least the same as the notifications sent by your iPhone.
Typically, it will do more as well, as fitness badges and information about how well your pals are doing with their exercise training routine frequently arrive on their own to the Watch.
However, if it’s your own Apple Watch and not one you set up and administer for a family member, you may adjust and fine-tune what notifications you receive. Changing any or all of the settings is a simple task. It takes a little longer to figure out what you want to be notified about and what you don’t.
Expect to spend some time fine-tuning what notifications you receive, how you receive them, and when you receive them. Here’s how to set this up on your iPhone, followed by how to do it straight on your Apple Watch.
Change settings on an iPhone first
- On the iPhone that’s paired to the Apple Watch, open the Watch app
- On the My Watch section, tap Notifications
- Scroll down to the list of apps and pick one
- Choose between Mirror my iPhone and Custom
Depending on the app, the Mirror my iPhone option may be near the top of the screen or considerably lower down. But it will always be there, and it is normally set to Mirror by default.
Aside from that, each app may have distinct settings, but they fall into two broad categories. There are general options and then app-specific settings.
General notification settings in Apple Watch apps
As long as Custom is selected, apps should always present at least three options.
- Allow Notifications
- Send to Notification Center
- Notifications Off
If you select anything other than Notifications Off, you will be given further options for how and when you receive notifications. You’ll hear a sound and feel a haptic tap on your wrist by default, but you may turn either or both off.
There’s then also Notification Grouping. This has three flavours:
- Off
- Automatically
- By App
Because you’ve previously decided whether or not to allow notifications, the real choice here is between Automatically and By App. If you select By App, every notification from that app will be displayed in a list.
You’ve most likely seen this. For example, a Reminders notice appears, but you can see that you may browse back through numerous recent ones.
The reason you’ve undoubtedly seen this is since the default setting is Automatically, and it will display your most-frequently used notifications in this manner. When you glance at Reminders notifications, for example, Machine Learning informs it what you most want.
Not all apps are created equal
All of this is true if an app developer uses all of the options provided by Apple. If they do not, for whatever reason, you may discover that it is worse than them simply not including all of the custom options.
It appears that you will be unable to turn off the notifications at all. That isn’t correct; the only difference is that there isn’t an Off option in the app’s settings.
And instead, there are two options. You can select to Mirror my iPhone and turn off phone notifications.
Alternatively, on the iPhone’s Watch app, you can return to the main Notifications page after exiting an app’s settings. Each app listed there has an on/off toggle. Just turn any you don’t want off.
Scroll further down toward the bottom of the screen and you’ll find a section headed Mirror my iPhone.
Apps should allow you to customize settings, but if they don’t then (far left) you can still turn them off
The difference between managing and seeing notifications
Just because you’ve enabled notifications on your Apple Watch doesn’t guarantee that you’ll see them. For starters, if you are on your iPhone when the notification arrives, it will only be displayed on the phone.
Another possibility is that you are in a Focus or Do Not Disturb mode. The Watch and your iPhone may have been disconnected, and the Watch may have been locked.
Or perhaps you simply do not have the time to investigate the haptic tap.
Now that we have always-on screens on Apple Watch Series 5, there is still the issue of wanting to view a notification but not having anyone else see it.
As a result, when you receive a notice, you will now just view a summary of it by default. When you feel the haptic tap or hear the sound, lift your wrist and you’ll get a brief notification summary on the screen.
You can then opt to view the complete detail by tapping on the brief summary. You can, however, specify that you always want the complete notification.
- On Apple Watch, open Settings
- Tap Notifications
- Scroll down and tap to turn off Tap to Show Full Notification
Similarly, even if your Watch is locked, a notification summary may still be displayed. You may disable Show Summary When Locked in the same Settings section.
Clearing old notifications
If you don’t look at your Watch notifications when they arrive, they disappear. Instead, a red dot appears at the top of the screen to signify that notifications are pending.
It could be a single notification or dozens. Swipe down from that red dot, and they will all be displayed as a sequence of overlapping notifications that you can swipe through.
They irritate me because they don’t go away. Even if you swipe through and read everything now, a huge proportion of them will still be there the next time you slide down to reveal them.
To dismiss the lot, slide upwards on the list until you see a button labelled
Clear All
You can also adjust many settings directly on the Apple Watch
It’s worth the effort
It would be ideal if every app was required to provide customisable notifications. And it would be ideal if there was a single switch that changed them all at once.
Even if it takes some time to fine-tune which notifications you receive, it’s worth it because you’re ultimately just ensuring that just the ones you care about get through.