How to get your Apple Watch to leave you alone

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Activate do not disturb and silence your Apple Watch right from your wrist.
Activate Do Not Disturb and silence your Apple Watch right from your wrist.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

If you’ve spent any time with an Apple Watch, you might have noticed that it notifies you quite a bit. There’s the ubiquitous Stand Up commands, notifications from Messages, Calendar and the like, and then all the third-party apps that send you taps all day long.

If you chose to have your Apple Watch mirror your iPhone’s Do Not Disturb schedule, at least it will stop bugging you during those hours, but what if you just need to stop the notifications right now on your Apple Watch?

Here’s how to do just that.

Activate your Apple Watch so that the watch face is showing. Now, swipe up from the bottom of the Apple Watch screen to activate the Glances system.

You might need to swipe to the right to get the farthest-left Glance (unless you’ve rearranged them). This is where you can turn on Airplane Mode, Do Not Disturb and Silent mode — all useful modes to keep your Apple Watch from bugging the crap out of you.

Tap on the Airplane icon to turn off both WiFi and Bluetooth (this will also disconnect your Watch from your iPhone). Tap on the crescent moon icon to turn on Do Not Disturb, even if it’s not currently set on your iPhone. Finally, tap on the bell with a line through it to mute your Apple Watch; sure, the sounds are discreet, but they sure seem loud in the middle of a quiet meeting.

You can also tap the little iPhone icon at the bottom to make your iPhone beep at you — super-helpful around the house now that you’re leaving your iPhone alone more.

To reverse all this and let your Apple Watch bug you incessantly again, just do the reverse of the above and you’ll be annoyed in no time.

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