Hi. Text & Email Notifications not showing on watch?

HI -

i am having the same problems. No text messages or emails are going to my watch.

I've reset, re-paired, restarted...etc. Odd thing is that everything seems to work except notifications and tones (which only beep when the charger is attached or the watch is paired.)

Spent about 90 minutes on the phone with Apple Support trying to diagnose and fix the issue. We fiddled with Do Not Disturb, individual mail accounts, text settings...all on the iPhone 6 Plus and the Watch in every combination of on and off we could think of.

He was looking at support information while we were on the phone, and told me about the phone having to be "asleep" for the notifications to work - but it didn't make any difference.

Since I unpacked and paired the phone I haven't received any texts or emails on the watch- and it's been about 8 hours.

Finally the service guy said I'd probably have to return the Watch. I have a genius bar appointment tomorrow but I'm hoping to read something here that fixes the issue before I have to go through a replacement process...

Thanks!

On the watch, under settings, the Do not disturb setting was ON. Turn it off. This fixed mine.

I was having the same issue...I was attempting to show Mail notifications on my watch while showing third party app (Outlook) notifications on my iPhone. I tried just using the Outlook notifications on my watch, but the notification won't actually let you read the message. It only shows you the subject and gives the option to Delete, Archive or Mark as Read. So I turned off Outlook notifications on the watch and for Mail notifications on the watch I deselected mirror my iPhone and chose 'custom' and then turned on all notifications for all accounts. Still nothing.

Well, I just got finished chatting with apple and he explained the problem to me, which makes perfect sense once you think about it. The email account I am using is gmail. Gmail doesn't support push to the native Mail app on iPhone (which was the main reason I switched to Outlook in the first place), so therefore even if you custom choose to get Mail notifications on the watch, they're still not going to get pushed to the watch because it's a gmail account. You should still be able to receive them, they will just be fetched and not pushed.

This wouldn't be a problem if the Outlook watch notification actually enabled you to actually read the message and not just gave you the subject and the options to delete, archive and mark as read. He confirmed it is the app developer who is responsible for the watch notification formatting, even if they don't have a watch app. So I am going to contact Outlook support and would recommend others do the same.

He also recommended the third party email app TL;DR (weird name I know https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tl-dr-email/id955530351?mt=8) which supports gmail push and has a watch app. I'll give it a try, but also hope Outlook updates their watch notification to have the ability to read the entire messageas I have grown to like their iPhone app.

Just an addendum...

When I finally got frustrated enough to put my phone and watch down, lo and behold two text messages came through to the watch..

So this now appears like a "sleep" issue.

Like a lot of folks today I spend time fiddling with the phone and the watch in tandem, loading apps...etc. I wish someone would have told me, "After initial setup leave the phone alone and let it go to sleep or nothing will pass through to the Watch..." Sheesh.

Thank you all for your help and suggestions... Tomorrow I'll no doubt join you in revisiting my Watch with fresh eyes, trying to figure out sleep timings, email settings and a host of other interesting things.

Cheers -

Yes, optimizing notifications will definitely take some trial and error.

I'm having a similar problem in that the taptic feedback has stopped working. It was ok for a few hours after setting the watch up but I can't get it to work now.

I forward all my mail from my main mail server to a Google account so it gets pushed to Outlook or Gmail app or similar but I can't get the watch to tap on an incoming message despite phone being off and notifications setup correctly.

Anyone else having problems with the taptic feedback?

Hmm, it's been okay for me. I definitely don't notice it as much if I'm standing and doing something. I've missed a couple of things, and have heard others say they feel like it's a little too soft too. But you're not missing it but actually not receiving any taptic feedback? That's concerning for sure.

This fixed it for me! Two-factor-verification seems to be the issue.

1. Go to "Manage my Apple ID" on you computer (https://appleid.apple.com/)
2. Login
3. "Password & Security"
4. Generate an App specific password
5. Type in "Messages" as name
6. save password
7. turn off Apple Watch
8. Disable iMessage on iPhone and reenable it
9. turn Apple Watch back on
10. Wait for "Wrong password error" or Open Messages app on watch
11. When prompted to enter you password again, type in your new specific iMessage password.
12. DONE

Worked for me. I'm happy again.

Don't forget we are using a 1.0 version, stuff like this can happen.

Davestan - this is really to all

your comment

... the taptic feedback has stopped working. It was ok for a few hours after setting the watch up but I can't get it to work now. ...

was kind of an Aha! moment for me -

let me disclaim that I am not an Watch owner but AM a decades long Apple Early Adopter and experienced trouble-shooter/debugger with a keen interest in the new stuff persisting.

As with many of Apple's products over the years, there may well be hidden "Easter Eggs" that are not well publicized as of yet.

What if the taptic notification feature has a "Battery Saving" attribute associated with it?

After "... a few hours ... " it goes into battery saving mode where it trims back on non-essential functions so as not to merely go dead because the little vibrator(?tapper?ticker?) uses more power than deemed essential?

just a thought from outside the box

ÇÇÇ

Thanks for the info! Sure enough, the Do Not Disturb was on in watch settings. Turned it off, and everything is working great now!

After setting up the Watch, I was not getting notifications for Calendar appts or Messages. But I was for everything else.

I unpaired and pair the Watch again and everything started working as expected.

Seems unlikely Chitlins!

There was plenty of battery power left at time and I don't agree that it was an Apple thing to do - much more likely to be a software issue.

After experiments it seems that notifications only get to the watch IF the iPhone is either off, or on standby.

it's set up so if you view the message on your computer/iphone already it won't notify your watch.

Now having had the chance to play around with mine the last 24 hours it's simple. For you to be able to receive the following your iphone must be in the lock mode. Messages/Emails/Incoming Calls.

And further more it must be on your wrist otherwise these functions will not work as the watch omits a signal which bounces off wrist wrist back to the watch.

Furthermore, if your with EE make sure you don not have WiFi calls enabled otherwise some features won't work due to the Apple software