Apple Watch, how to take control of all notifications from your wrist

One of the things that I’ve loved most about the Apple Watch since the two months I’ve been with it is something Kevin Lynch said in an interview he gave shortly after introducing the smartwatch to the public. The Apple Watch came mainly to change the way you handle the vast majority of notifications.

Obviously, there will be many times when you will need to take the iPhone out of your pocket or bag and have to attend to an email or message from it. But the crux of the matter is how we manage our day to day and be less “smartphone-dependent” . To do this, we at Apple are going to give you a series of tips to take control of your notifications.

Apple Watch, how to take control of all notifications from your wrist
Apple Watch, how to take control of all notifications from your wrist

If you have an Apple Watch… Have you ever noticed that it’s not so hard to get to the end of the day on a battery charge on your iPhone anymore? Yes, haven’t you? I’m afraid the main responsible for this is the Apple Watch. Let’s get on with the job, see how we can handle all our apps properly and above all… how to set up your notifications.

Initial steps, get everything ready

Let’s start at the beginning, so we don’t lose anyone. Basically, the Apple Watch is a mirror of the iPhone, so any application you have configured on your iPhone to show notifications will also show them by default in the Apple Watch , but we have some leeway.

For example, we can set our Apple Watch to display a alert indicator for pending notifications . This will be a single red dot at the top of the watch screen. If you have a pending notification, simply swipe it as you would swipe the iPhone’s notification center and you’ll see all the pending notifications.

These two options, within the notifications section of the Apple Watch application on your iPhone, are the ones that show, on the one hand, the indicator and, on the other hand if you want the details of the notifications to be shown only when we access the alert .

In this same section of the application we can configure which applications we want to show notifications in our Apple Watch. My advice here is to make a careful selection of the applications you want to be shown. I don’t think for example that you need the Clash of Clans to launch notifications in your Apple Watch.

Differences between third-party and Apple applications

Apple allows more configuration options in the native Apple Watch applications

In the section of notifications that we see within the Apple Watch application, it differentiates the native applications of the Apple Watch (of the own Apple) with the applications of third parties . Apple allows us a little more control when handling how we want to receive notifications in their applications.

For third-party applications, we can only choose whether or not to be notified of any updates, leaving control of that notification to the settings we have reflected on our iPhone.

In contrast, in the native applications we will have more options. You can choose to have them behave the same as on the iPhone or you can limit certain functions . Whether or not to show warnings, sound or vibrate our Apple Watch.

Control quickly when you cannot be disturbed

An interesting feature of the Apple Watch is the way we cut off notifications when we don’t want to be disturbed. We can control all of this quickly and easily.

From the “views” , which we can always access by sliding our finger from bottom to top on the Apple Watch screen, we will look for the connection options of the Apple Watch.

We have three options that you are probably familiar with on your iPhone. Flight mode, Do Not Disturb mode, and No Sound mode.

If we select the no sound mode, when receiving notifications no sound will be played, but what will happen is that the clock will continue to vibrate . This way we can know that we are being called or that we are getting a notification even if we are in an environment where we have to keep the clock (and phone) quiet.

On the other hand, the option not to disturb will cut off the notifications completely , no sounds, no vibrations and absolutely nothing.

Manage your notifications like a Ninja

And how do I handle notifications as they come in? Everything works with simple touch gestures . If we receive a notification and the Apple Watch shows it to us on the screen, we can discard it and consider ourselves “notified”.

By clicking on the notification we can “expand” it and see all the information it provides. If we don’t attend to it it will become part of the Apple Watch notification center , which we can access with the same gesture we use to display it on the iPhone, by sliding our finger down.

In the list of notifications that the smartwatch shows us, by clicking on each notification we will expand it and by sliding your finger over the notification to the left, it will give us the option to delete the one we want. If, on the other hand, we want to delete all the notifications we have simply we will have to press hard until Force Touch comes into action and allows us to delete all of them.

Ready to control all your Apple Watch notifications?

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