Hi. Text & Email Notifications not showing on watch?

IIt's true. If my phone is off, the watch will chirp.

I'm getting pretty frustrated. I get alerts occasionally, notifications almost never. Especially with Messages and Mail. Never seen a "stand up" notification, either (and I've missed a few hours on the blue activity ring, so they should have shown up). Tried tests (with comp and phone sleeping) and no luck. Walked around town today and felt my phone buzz in my pocket with emails and texts, but my watch stayed quiet. Phone calls seem to come through regularly.

Called Apple support (for the second time in 3 days), repaired and tried a bunch of combinations of phone and watch app settings. Tried ExWoW's (rather involved) two step verification fix (made an app specific pass for Messages), but I haven't gotten a "wrong password" or "enter password" prompt on either the phone or the watch. So his fix might indeed work, but my use case doesn't seem to complete his steps.

I know this is V1, but not super happy with this amount of troubleshooting and seeming lack of knowledge from Apple Care reps. Was really excited to get this on day one, but that excitement is fading.

unpair and reset your network setting on your phone then pair watch back and see if that helps with the messages. It fixed the problem for me, and now I'm getting all messages and notifications

Ok Streve, let me give you the steps I took with two-step verification. They were a little different from what ExWoW wrote.

1. Turn on two-step verification on the manage Apple ID webpage. Remember to copy down The recovery key.

2. Go to iPhone settings->Messages and turn off iMessage and turn it back on.

3. A new link will appear that says sign-in to Apple ID. Click that and fill in your Apple ID and password

4. A pop up will appear that says you need an app specific password, choose Create

5. You will be redirected to a page where it will create an app specific password for "Messages and FaceTime". COPY that code and then go back to the iMessage setting and PASTE in to the password line where you had typed your Apple ID password before. So in the Apple ID login for iMessage, you are replacing your normal Apple ID password that you put in before with the newly created app specific password.

After that you should get some notifications on other devices using the same Apple ID that your iPhone and the paired watch are now using iMessage. That's when I started getting notifications for text messages. Can't promise that'll help, but it did work for me.

-Brandon

Thanks for the help, but I don't get the same prompts you do. After I enable two step, and turn off and on Messages, I don't get any more new links to sign in again or pop-ups to make app specific passwords. Tried it twice, same thing - after 2 step and Messages on/off, everything just works and I'm not prompted with any more auth/pass create screens 😟

Very odd Steve. There's no telling if this would even work for you and I already mentioned what a pain in the butt two-step verification is just to get a fundamental feature of the Watch working. I can't even imagine WHY turning on two-step would make a difference. Let's hope for some quick patches so we don't have to go jumping through ridiculous hoops to try to get our Watches to work as promised.

Try turning off wifi calling. That fixed it for me. It seems like a glitch.

Thanks! Might have helped. Looks like all of email notifications were OFF when I have Mirror My iPhone set. I went to Custom and turned the notifications ON. Not sure it this will turn something else OFF, though, so far one test message correctly pinged the watch when the phone was asleep.

Even though turning on 2-step didn't ask me for all those extra app specific password steps, for some reason today notifications seemed to be working pretty well. Not sure if it was the 2-step verification of my Apple ID or what, but today my watch started acting like advertised.

Take a look at this, see if it helps.

About Notifications on your Apple Watch - Apple Support

I have a feeling that many here would prefer the option to have the notification sent both to phone and Watch, even when phone is in use.

I Tried everything that everyone is saying on here and nothing worked so I did a soft reset holding down both buttons on the side of the watch and that fixed it for me.

I just noticed that problem too and looked it up. If your phone is unlocked, notifications will appear on your phone. If your phone is locked but your watch is on and not locked, they will show up only on your watch. I'm not too wild about that myself- I have different tones for work and for personal email, so now those don't work. They're also not as loud. I wish they could show on both- because I also miss my phone screen not showing the messages.

Completely agree!!!!

I'm going to disagree on getting notifications in both places. I already get notifications from three sources at work: computer, iPad and iPhone. When there is a large burst of emails that go out at work, I already get everything three times (this can be 30 emails in as many minutes, not including personal so 90-100). Getting it a fourth time would drive me insane. I think what we need is the OPTION to get notified both places.