Watch overrides audible notification alerts on iPhone

I just spoke to Apple support, and they stated that this is by design. They have apparently gotten enough feedback on this to escalate it to their engineering team. I would give them a call, or contact them at http://www.apple.com/feedback/ to make sure that they hear loud and clear that this should be an option.

So to summarize. If you have custom tones for contacts who message you, or custom tones for mailbox messages, you are stuck with "DING" on the Apple Watch if its' paired and you have it getting notifications. Yes, hope this is changed. Cannot live with generic notifications on the Apple watch nor loss of custom tones on the phone.

So a temporary workaround as mentioned above is to open the Watch app on your iPhone and disable "wrist detection". By disabling it will push alerts to both your iPhone and watch but the downside is it will remove Apple Pay capability from Watch and won't auto lock when you take it off. Hopefully there will be a better fix soon

SicEm06 wrote:

So a temporary workaround as mentioned above is to open the Watch app on your iPhone and disable "wrist detection". By disabling it will push alerts to both your iPhone and watch but the downside is it will remove Apple Pay capability from Watch and won't auto lock when you take it off. Hopefully there will be a better fix soon

The additional downside is that you will have to enter a passcode on the watch fairly often.

I am receiving inconsistent audible text alerts on my iPhone when wearing my Apple Watch. Unfortunately the Watch is not alerting me to the text either. I thought I fixed it by turning off Cover to Mute and turning off Wrist Detection. Unfortunately I am still only getting some audible text alerts. And yes, the Watch is set to mirror the iPhone for Messages, and the iPhone is set to give me audible alerts for texts. The phone is not set on silent. It seems a lot of people are experiencing this, although nobody has come up with a solution other than, "Tell Apple about it," Which I have done. Sorry I don't have a solution, but would love to hear from anyone who does.

I Just added my feedback also. I would also like to see customizable notifications for the watch so you could know who is texting or calling without looking.

Boy, I am glad I found this thread.

I too lost notification pings from the IPhone for IMessage, but other alerts still work such as email.

I shut down bluetooth, did various tests with and without the watch paired and sure enough it pointed to when watch was on and paired and when watch had Imessage notifications turned on you loose them on a Locked Iphone. When Iphone was Open, Alerts would process.

Very strange, very wrong and should be configurable. Why shut down IMessage and not other apps (thank goodness).

Hoping they fix this one, as has me on fence from putting it back in the box.

Yes this is expected of the device

About Notifications on your Apple Watch - Apple Support

I am having a different experience. My watch seems to be very iffy. Most times I receive notifications on my watch but although my phone does not wake it still dings and shows unread txt msgs even though I have responded to the msgs on my watch. Yesterday my watch stopped receiving calls. Tech support told me to turn off both my phone and watch, wait for a while and turn them on again. This did work for the caller ID and ringing on my watch but didn't for the iffy txt and mail notifications.

AAlso, when using google maps, I typically have the phone in my doc, but the screen off. The screen will light up when I have to make a turn. Now that notification is sent to the watch, with no sound or vibration, so I miss It. I have to take my watch off of my wrist when using Google maps for navigation.

I sent feedback on this a few weeks back, hope they include some customization on the next software release because the alerts and vibrate is not enough for me to notice so I end up missing of being late to meetings, not answering calls I receive or noticing that someone sent me a text. I would of expected there to be at least a couple tones to choose from but no you only have one choice and that one is not load enough.

I have this same problem when receiving Mail and have filed a bug report...

When I receive mail while my iPhone is sleeping, I get a notification on my Apple Watch. But that notification is not enough to alert me that mail has arrived. This causes me to miss timely emails (important for my business)

The problem is that when the iPhone is sleeping (always sleeping when it is in my case on my belt), the iPhone will not vibrate or play a sound. Instead it uses the Apple watch to notify me. While this might seem like a clever idea, it is very bad because it does not work.

The haptic pulse is not strong enough (even when turned up all the way) to alert me.

SOLUTION: Allow users an option to let the iPhone vibrate and play a sound when mail arrives while wearing an Apple Watch with mail notification turned on. (You need both the Apple Watch and iPhone notifications at the same time).

I have missed enough important email notifications to warrant my turning off notifications for Mail on my Apple Watch. That way my iPhone will notify me when mail comes in.

I will leave the setting that way for now. But it defeats the main reason that I wanted an Apple Watch. I want to be able to simply raise my wrist when I hear an email arrive to see if I need to pull my iPhone out of my case to read the mail.

Apple could fix this in the Apple Watch app in Notifications / Mail / Custom

by having two options instead of one. The two options would be:

Show Alerts on Apple Watch Only

Show Alerts on Apple Watch and iPhone.

I had that issue as well. I ended up going into the Apple Watch app on the phone and turning off the email notification. This way it will always send email notifications to the phone, instead of the watch (The way it was before the watch ever came along).

I wish they would allow us to have it both ways.. Someday..