Apple Watch Review Diary - Notifications


Notifications I'd guess will be the most used feature of the Apple Watch just by the number of times it will tap/chime on your wrist. The system actually seems pretty convoluted, but the goal is to make it seamlessly work with all your devices so to be transparent. Likely, you'll be rethinking how your iOS notifications are configured. This is what I think I've figured out so far.

Core features of the Apple Watch mostly have options to either mirror iPhone notification settings or have independent settings. These are for things like Calendar, Mail, Maps, Messages, etc. All the rest of your apps you either enable or disable by mirroring the iPhone notifications settings. On the iPhone, you'll need to turn on sound alerts for each app if you want your watch to tap/chime. If you don't set this, it will just appear as an item in the notification view for you to review.

The idea appears that the Apple Watch, iOS, and OS X will work together to not disturb you in more than one place. Here what I've observed.

While wearing the Apple Watch:

- If your phone is active (not locked/sleep), notifications will appear on the iPhone. No notification will appear on the Watch.

- If your phone is locked, they will appear on the watch and not do a sound alert on the iPhone.

- When you wake the phone, you'll see notifications on the screen like normal and also in the notification view.

- If you have Messages window open and active on the Mac, no text messages notification will be sent to the watch. Or phone, as has been the case.

While not wearing the Apple Watch:

- Sound alerts will happen on the phone
- No notifications will appear on the watch or in the notifications view.

I found it a little confusing because I was left wondering why I wasn't getting notifications on my watch while tinkering on my phone. Once I figured out what's going on, it all made more sense. Also, like mentioned, I completely redid my notifications because generally I don't like my phone making sound alerts. I had to enable alerts to get my watch to tap at me. I'm not a big fan of the chime alerts on the watch, but you can turn down the watch volume or mute it and it will still tap you.

Lastly, I just wanted to plug IFTTT again. IFTTT can be configured to do all sorts of things and I'm finding it really handy with the Apple Watch. You can have recipes to generate notifications or you can receive a notification when most recipe types run so you can keep on top of what's going on.

Notifications to me was one of the least interesting features of the Apple Watch because I felt I basically always had them with my Pebble Watch. The implementation though brings a lot to the table in not having excessive alerts everywhere plus some fine tuning I can do with my various alerts. I'm guessing I'll probably back off the notifications in time to be more silent (no taps) because I usually don't like intrusive interruptions, but for now I'm liking it.