Question from Amy: Can anyone tell me why my Apple Watch would suddenly stop vibrating when I get a notification? I didn’t change anything. Text, phone call, reminder, calendar alert etc.😕
I’ve had this problem before. Both vibration and sound were completely off while I continue to receive incoming calls from friends.
I misconfigured a setting in the Settings app, which prevented the Apple Watch from vibrating when it received notifications.
Enable Vibration on Apple Watch for Calls and Messages
- Turn on your iPhone and go to the Watch app.
- Go to My Watch (this is a tab) > Phone > select Custom.
- Find Ringtone, under this page, turn on Sound and Haptics.
From there, slowly adjust the sound to your liking. Additionally, you can also enable Prominent Haptics, which will pre-announce some of the alerts you often see on your Apple Watch.
The Haptic Strength allows you to adjust the force of the vibration. In this case, we want our watch to vibrate as much (strength) as possible so that we can be alerted of incoming calls and text messages.
One more thing, make sure Do Not Disturb mode is disabled on your watch. If it is, well, you won’t be disturbed 🙂
Apple Watch Doesn’t Vibrate for Facebook Messenger Notifications
Matt Brown
I got an Apple Watch SE yesterday and all seems ok apart from WhatsApp and Facebook messenger notifications, when I get a normal text the watch lights up and vibrates with the notification/message but with WhatsApp and Facebook messenger it just shows an orange dot on the screen without the vibration and screen light up, feels like I’ve tried everything but must be missing something out, can anyone help please.
Christiane Bayes
Turn off wrist detection in the watch app. The only thing that I found works. Apple messed up. This is the new norm. I am not impressed.
Christine-tog Plouffe
Back in the old days (upgraded to the 6 recently) when I received an alert on my phone (text message, FB Messenger, and/or phone call) only my watch buzzed or tweeted – Now, both my watch and phone buzz or tweets or rings. How can I fix that? I just want my watch to buzz. I don’t want my phone to do anything… Thanks in advance!
Neil Taylor
Go into notifications in the Watch app and set it to mirror iPhone.
Can I get notifications on both my iPhone AND Apple Watch?
I don’t think so. That has been my biggest complaint. I want my iPhone to ring, ding and buzz but if I am wearing my watch my phone is silent. I do not always feel/hear my watch notifications. I think that is a huge mistake by Apple. You should have a choice if you want notifications just on your watch or only on your phone or on both. When I say notifications, I mean for my iPhone to also ring, ding, or buzz along with my Apple Watch. – Betsy ML
How can I turn on text notifications if I have my Apple Watch on?
Turn off wrist detection in your Apple Watch app.
Will my Apple Watch vibrate if it gets a text message from an Android device?
Yes. You get all notifications from Android, Apple, computer-based texts, and so on. – Angie Michele
My Apple Watch plays some sounds, but I get nothing for text messages, no ding or vibration.
I turned it off and on again, and now it works. Must have been stuck on something. – Kara Roberts
THANK YOU!!! Since the most recent update my alarms were not making sound or haptics but this fixed my problem! THANK YOU!!!!
This did not fix my problem. Also, on the iPhone 7 I don’t have option to increase intensity of vibration.
Thank you so much!
Any advice for this problem on a Series 2 Apple Watch?
I’m sure this has been asked before but I’m new to the Apple Watch. Is there anyway to get your phone to get message alerts when you watch is turned on and connected. My phone doesn’t ping or even light up the screen when I get a text message.
If your phone is locked, notifications go straight up your watch… your phone then will not ping or light up…If your watch is locked, the notifications go straight to your phone.