How To Silence Your Apple Watch

You can silence or mute notifications and other alerts on Apple Watch in four ways.

• There are several methods for turning off an Apple Watch.
• Muting your Apple Watch only mutes sounds; Theater Mode prevents the display from turning on when you raise your wrist and Do Not Disturb mutes calls and notifications.
• You can also silence incoming alerts on the device using the Cover to Mute feature.

As someone who can’t remember the last time their phone rang (or even vibrated, thanks to Do Not Disturb), figuring out how to silence my Apple Watch was high on my priority list when I first got it.

There are several ways to silence your Apple Watch, which we’ve outlined below:

How to Mute Your Apple Watch

Muting your Apple Watch will only silence the device’s sounds. Here’s how to go about it.

1. To access the Control Center, swipe up on the Watch face.
2. To activate Silent Mode, tap the bell icon. When this feature is enabled, the icon will light up with a slash through the bell.
3. While Apple Watch is charging, you can still receive haptic notifications (taps on your wrist) and alarms and timers will sound.
4. Disable Haptic Alerts in the Apple Watch Settings app or the iPhone Watch app by tapping Sounds & Haptics and switching Haptic Alerts off.

How to Enable Do Not Disturb

This feature prevents calls and alerts from being heard or displayed on your Watch screen.

1. To access the Control Center, swipe up on the Watch face.
2. Click on the crescent moon icon.
3. Choose an option to specify how long this feature will be active. “On” will keep Do Not Disturb on until you manually turn it off, while options like “On for 1 hour” and “On until this evening” will turn off Do Not Disturb after a predetermined amount of time.
4. When Do Not Disturb is enabled, a moon icon appears in the center of the Watch face.
5. When in Do Not Disturb mode, alarms continue to sound.
6. Activating or deactivating Do Not Disturb also activates or deactivates the feature on iPhone, as well as switching the feature on and off.

How to Enable Theater Mode

Another way to silence your Apple Watch is to use Theater Mode. When Theater Mode is enabled, Silent Mode is activated, and the Wake Screen on Wrist Raise feature is temporarily disabled.

1. To access the Control Center, swipe up on the Watch face.
2. Select the icon with two masks.
3. When Theater Mode is enabled, the masks icon appears at the top of the Watch display.
4. In Theater Mode, you will still receive haptic notifications.
5. To activate Theater Mode and wake the Watch screen, tap the display or press the side button or Digital Crown.

How to Turn Off an Incoming Alert

If you forget to mute or otherwise silence notifications beforehand, you can silence an incoming alert or notification using the Cover to Mute feature.

1. Enable Cover to Mute by opening the Watch iPhone app, tapping the My Watch tab, and then selecting Sounds & Haptics. Set the Cover to Mute.
2. Cover the display with your palm until you feel a tap to silence an incoming alert or notification.