Notifications on Apple Watch if iPhone is unlocked with Do Not Disturb

Hi

No - you would not receive notifications on your watch.

How notifications behave depends on the status of your devices and your settings. With Wrist Detection enabled, in order to bring notifications to your attention as soon as possible:

- If your iPhone is unlocked, you will receive notifications on your iPhone instead of on your watch.

- If your iPhone is locked or asleep and your watch is unlocked (regardless of whether the watch screen is asleep or awake) and on your wrist, you will receive notifications on your watch.

- If your watch is locked or has Do Not Disturb enabled, notifications will go to your iPhone.

More information:

About notifications on your Apple Watch - Apple Support

I'm afraid that no-one here can advise you why Apple designed notifications to behave that way (this is a user-based community).

If you would like to submit feedback to Apple, you can do so here:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch.html

Apologies - my original reply was not worded correctly (I have edited it to correct this).

The watch would not receive notification alerts.

To clarify: I answered your specific question in the first sentence.

The following section was intended as a general description of when you can expect notifications to be delivered to each device. This remains subject to other settings, so was not intended to also reflect having DND enabled on your iPhone.

It is also not necessarily the case that Do Not Disturb mode is automatically enabled on the paired iPhone when it is enabled on the watch. That behaviour depends on whether the setting to Mirror iPhone has been enabled in the Watch app.

I apologise if you feel the remainder of the answer was unclear.

As previously advised, under the circumstances that you describe, the watch will not receive notification alerts.

This answer was confirmed by testing before being posted in my previous replies.

vinaygoel2000 wrote:

Can I get notifications on my Apple Watch if my kid is playing games on my iPhone with Do Not Disturb?

If the games do not require access to the internet and your watch can access a compatible, known Wi-Fi network, you can instead use the following configuration in order to receive notifications on your watch (for certain apps) whilst your child is playing games:

• On your iPhone, in the Watch app, go to: My Watch (tab) > General > Airplane Mode - turn off Mirror iPhone.
• Place your iPhone into Airplane Mode:

  From the Home screen, swipe up to open Control Centre > tap on the Airplane Mode button to enable the mode.

• On your watch:
  • Allow a few moments for your watch to recognise and respond to the loss of connection with your iPhone.
  • Then check, via the Settings Glance, that your watch has connected automatically, as a fallback, to the Wi-Fi network:
    • When viewing the time on your watch face, swipe up on the screen, then swipe left / right until you find the Settings Glance.
    • "Connected" and a green cloud symbol confirms that your watch has connected to Wi-Fi.

Under these settings, your watch will continue to offer features - with associated notifications, where applicable - including:

• Use the watch to tell the time, along with alarms and timers that have been set directly on the watch.
• Send and receive messages using iMessage.
• Send and receive Digital Touch messages.
• Make and receive phone calls and send and receive SMS text messages - subject to Wi-Fi calling being enabled and to these features being supported by your carrier.
• Use Siri.

More information:

How to use your Apple Watch without your iPhone nearby - Apple Support

About Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on Apple Watch - Apple Support