How to Reduce Apple Watch Notifications

Learn how to cut down on unwanted alerts on your Apple Watch.

Cull Your Apps

One of the most effective ways to keep the notifications on your watch to a minimum is to cut down on the number of apps that are on your watch. You can do this on your iPhone by opening the Watch app and in the My Watch tab, scrolling down to the section labeled Installed On Apple Watch. From here, tap on any app you don’t want on your watch and toggle Show App on Apple Watch off. You can then tap Notifications in the My Watch tab and go through the apps to choose which you receive notifications from. Just scroll down and tap the toggles on and off as desired.

Summarize Your Notifications

While notification summaries don’t reduce the number of notifications you get, they can give you the gist so you can make a quick decision whether to open the message or alert or leave it until later. You need to have Apple Intelligence, so you’ll need an iPhone 15 or later running iOS 18.3 or later. On your iPhone, go into Settings, tap Notifications, then toggle on Summarize Notification. You can also manually choose which apps you want notification summaries for.

Mute with One Hand

To really silence your notifications, you should enable Cover to Mute. That way, when the few remaining notifications do come through, but you’re in a meeting or otherwise unable to acknowledge a notification, you can just place your hand over your watch face to quickly and discreetly silence it. Open the Settings app on your watch or the Watch app on your iPhone, tap Gestures, and toggle on Cover to Mute. Silence is just a wrist flick away!

Enjoy the Silence

Next you’ll want to decide what sound, if any, you want your notifications to have. I have my watch in Silent Mode permanently, but I do allow haptic vibration. This means I can get notifications with minimal disturbance to others. Silent Mode is enabled by tapping the bell icon in your Control Center on your watch so it’s red with a line through the bell. To choose a sound, open Settings on your watch, scroll down to Sound & Haptics, scroll down until you see Ringtone and more, and choose the sounds you’d like for each.