Apple Watch vibrates / haptics still on in Focus / Do Not Disturb / Sleep Mode - This fix worked for me

i couldn’t find the solution anywhere so I thought I would post what finally allowed me to get my Apple Watch to stop vibrating during the night. I don’t know if this will work for others, but it worked for me.

This post describes the steps for iOS 18.3.1.

Assuming that you share your Focus Mode settings across devices you can do this on your iPhone.

Go to Settings -> Focus -> Do Not Disturb (or whatever focus mode you want to edit)

You will see 2 options: People and apps. If you’re like me you don’t have any people or apps selected because you don’t want ANY sounds, vibrations, or haptics while in Do Not Disturb.

Tap on apps. Make sure the option “Allow notifications from” is selected. This seems to be set by default anyways, but make sure.

Here’s the key. Select at least one app. Don’t leave the list empty like I did. I selected the “alarms” app.

Make sure “time sensitive notifications” is also turned off.

I had to choose at least one app to ALLOW. Leaving the “allow” list empty appears to fail and ends up letting everything through despite the fact that I had it set to “allow notifications from” and I left that list empty.