Apple Watch Series 5 and Tattooed skin

For what it’s worth, really tightening the watch band on my tattooed arm made all the difference for me, but it may be because it’s keeping the watch in a spot that isn’t heavily inked. Might be worth a shot!

I have sleeves on both my arms so feel your pain. The heart monitor will work on tattoos if you open the heart monitor app. But it will not refresh every 5 minutes or whatever the settings are as it would on inkfree skin.

this is really bad, they should inform the customers before getting them that the watch barely works with tattoos..

Agreed. This is a gross oversight. It took me talking to three people before I got someone to admit this was a real issue. And that person went on to say she has had some LOTIONS cause the same issue. Which, as I told her, is a bit easier of an issue to work around. It just seems crazy to me. In my research I also discovered that some people with very dark skin have issues too which is low key racist in my opinion.

Yes! I totally did that and it helped. But you know what helped instantly? I put some moisturizer on my wrist, and that did an instant fix...but yeah, tightening the strap also worked.

But what is weird, and I mentioned this...is the heart rate monitor works just fine. I had a Fitbit a couple years back, and at least Fitbit had the foresight, and the decency to let their customers know (I think it was in the manual) that dark tattoos would affect the performance.

It's kinda annoying, all of this still. I really hope, and I assume there will be some sort of a firmware/software fix for this.

It took me more then 6 months to find out it was because of my tattoo. They always said it was a software issue and would get fixed by next update... never even got my refund as the troubleshoot took more then 30 days..

As mentioned in a previous reply: I use these and they work perfectly.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AFRWIRQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have tattoos on both wrists, so I gave this a try. I put one on in the morning, wear the watch throughout the day, then take it off at night to charge. Always-on works, apple pay works, HR works, and it still locks if I take it off my wrist. I even swim with the watch and it counts laps correctly now, which it did not before because of the tattoos. Not the perfect solution, but much better than not being able to use the features of the watch.

The epoxy "dots" work, so there should be something that they could do with the actual lens on the sensor itself. It would likely prohibit the ECG feature, but honestly I'd much rather an option that works on all skin types that an ECG feature that I really never use.

The only crummy thing about this is that it will not do continuous heart rate. Seems like you should just opt in to those things but I understand it’s a security issue for some. But I agree this is a good solution if you don’t care about continuous heart rate.

I used the epoxy dots on my series 3 because of my tattoo sleeve and it worked great! I just bought the series 5 this a couple of days ago and was hoping the new sensors would not need them. I was wrong. I have had it 2 days and am currently wearing it on the wrong wrist until I decide if the dots effect the heart features that I need it for.. The ECG is done through the crown, but I am wondering if the AF readings will still be accurate, for us with possible AFib. I know if checks for Afib on occasion, but I am worried that the epoxy dots will interfere. Any idea?

There's no reason to believe it will behave any differently.

I’ve just been speaking to Apple and they told me they didn’t know of any issue and didn’t know of any fix!

Or they could allow the HRM/Wrist Sensor to be turned off at user choice yet still allow the other functions to work as expected. I do not see why they need to be tied together

Hello Again,

Never mind on my previews comments, it stop working "always on" on my tattooed wrist.

In this state that you have setup, does it still record continuous heart rate?

Nop! Just bought series 5 and this issue still remains in my tattoed arm. Hope this helps