How Do I Get Notifications On Both iPhone and Apple Watch?

How do I get notifications on both iPhone and Apple Watch? If you own both an iPhone and Apple Watch but can’t figure out how you can receive notifications on both devices, then this guide is for you!

If you have an Apple Watch and an iPhone, you might have noticed that every time you receive a notification on your phone, the smartwatch takes over automatically, so your phone doesn’t give you any hint that a notification has been received.

It remains silent and doesn’t ring or light up and the notifications are received only on your smartwatch. But, what if you didn’t want that? What if you wanted these notifications to appear both on your smartphone and your Apple Watch?

At first glance, this may seem obvious: why would you want notifications on your phone when you have an expensive smartwatch on your hand? However, people have different preferences, and some like to receive their notifications on both devices.

For instance, many people don’t like viewing notifications on their smartwatch, especially if it is an email that they want to read or a lengthy text message. Needless to say, it’s easier to read an email on your mobile phone instead of your watch.

While the default configuration is set up in a way that it prevents you from receiving notifications on your phone while the Apple Watch is connected, there is a tiny technique that you can use to make sure that it is enabled.

However, before you do attempt to enable it, it’s important to understand that this is going to disable a couple of features on your watch. There’s no way to get the best of both worlds, so you will just have to make your peace with it and compromise on those features.

How Do I Get Notifications On Both iPhone and Apple Watch?

If you are interested in enabling the notifications on both of your devices, you should know that there is a simple way to do it. First of all, you will have to turn off wrist detection on the smartwatch.

The wrist detection feature can be turned off from the Watch app on your iPhone. You will get a warning when you are about to turn the feature off but ignore it.

For those who don’t know, the wrist detection feature on your smartwatch is designed to give you notifications and updates every time you flick your wrist or look at the watch.

The number of times that most people turn their wrist around unknowingly might surprise you, but that’s okay.

Now, whenever you receive a notification on your mobile phone, it’s going to be pinged on your smartwatch as well as your iPhone. However, as mentioned above, you will have to make a small sacrifice if you want this feature to work.

What You Lose

The Apple Watch comes with a range of nifty sensors that make it easy to use. Whenever you raise your wrist or turn it, you will get to see the notifications on your watch, and it will show you the time.

Furthermore, if you have a passcode installed, the watch will automatically lock up when it’s not being worn. As a result of that, your information remains secure. So, the biggest compromise here is passcode protection.

If you accidentally leave your watch somewhere or lose it, that person is likely to gain access to all of your data stored on the watch unless you remotely lock it. You won’t be able to protect your watch with a passcode anymore unless you have this feature enabled.

Furthermore, whenever you disable the feature, according to Apple’s protection policy, your Apple Pay cards will be removed, and certain Activity measurements will also become unavailable.

The company also reminds you that your watch will stop locking automatically every time it is not being worn. So as mentioned, another thing that you are going to lose is support for Apple Pay.

If you like to pay directly using Apple Pay, this might not be something that you would want. Finally, you also have to consider that certain measurements for Activities are going to be unavailable too, and you won’t be able to get achievements or awards.

However, not all is doom and gloom when this feature is turned off. You might not realize just how many times the screen lights up during the course of the day unintentionally, and it has to be said that a considerable amount of battery is consumed over time.

When you turn this feature off, you will notice a significant improvement in your watch’s battery life!

Feature Requests

There has been a lot of noise about this in the past, but the company has yet to listen. Why should there not be a dedicated feature that allows you to receive notifications on both your smartwatch and your iPhone?

The company has generally avoided this feature as of yet because they feel that it diminishes the effectiveness and the usefulness of the Apple Watch.

People are wired to look at their phones as soon as it rings or vibrates, and many people are likely to get confused when both the watch and the iPhone vibrate simultaneously.

By cutting off the notification from one device, the company makes it easy for you to focus on the one device that vibrates, your watch.

It’s basically not a big feature either, Apple just needs to make a small tweak to its operating system and release the feature with an update in the future, though it doesn’t seem likely at this point.

The company has a history of making sure that they only release quality of life improvements after evaluating them from all angles, and there have been many cases where the company has completely skimped on providing features that are a standard on other devices.

For instance, there are plenty of smartwatches in the market right now, and many of them give you unprecedented control when it comes to setting up your notifications.

But, Apple often takes things slow for its own devices, so it remains to be seen whether the company will ever provide this feature.

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About David

Hey there, I'm David. I recently joined the Spacehop team from Tech Devised, and love writing about all things TECH! When I'm not writing, you can find me enjoying the great outdoors with my golden retriever Lucy or enjoying a pint at my local Irish pub.

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