In this guide, we will explain why your Apple Watch can randomly vibrate and what steps you can take to prevent it from happening.
Turn off Taptic Time
With Taptic Time enabled, your Apple Watch will tap your wrist to tell you the time. There are no visual elements on your watch face, and you may be left wondering why your Apple Watch just vibrated.
If you accidentally turned on Taptic Time, you can easily turn it off from the Watch app or Apple Watch Settings. After that, your watch won’t vibrate randomly.
- Open the Settings app on your Apple Watch.
- Tap Clock.
- Scroll down and tap Taptic Time.
- Turn off the switch for Taptic Time.
Deactivate Chimes
Similar to Taptic Time, your Apple Watch can vibrate and play a sound every hour. You can turn it off from Settings > Clock > Chimes.
Phone calls
Your Apple Watch will vibrate when you get a call. It does so even if you put the watch in silent mode. But if you don’t want that, you can turn off haptics for phone calls.
- Open the Watch app on your iPhone.
- Tap Phone.
- Turn off Haptics.
Extra info: You can also turn off all incoming call alerts on your Apple Watch.
Manage app notifications
In most cases, it will be a text, email, or other app notification that will cause your Apple Watch to vibrate. Thankfully, unlike Taptic Time, when a notification hits your wrist, you will see a confirmation on the screen.
But if you do not want to get bothered by app notifications on your Apple Watch, you can go to the Watch app and turn them off for all or selected apps.
- Open the Watch app on your companion iPhone.
- Make sure you’re in the My Watch tab, and tap Notifications.
- You will see Apple’s apps at the top. Select one and choose Notifications Off. If you don’t see this option, tap Custom > Notifications Off. Repeat this for other apps.
- Next, you will see third-party iPhone apps that can mirror notifications to your Apple Watch. Turn off their switches to stop receiving their alerts on your wrist.
Note that even if you turn off app notifications on your Apple Watch, they will continue to show up on your iPhone as usual.
Daily Activity notifications
Apple Watch is big on fitness. So, from time to time, it will:
- Vibrate your wrist and ask you to complete your daily move goal, close your Activity Rings, and such.
- Once you hit the daily goals, it will then notify you of your good job.
- Show you the awards you have collected.
- Ask you to stand up and walk for a minute if you have been sitting idle for an hour.
These little things can play a part in improving your health. But if you already follow your workout routines religiously and do not need to be bothered by notifications from your watch, head back to the Watch app > Notifications > Activity and turn them off or customize the options accordingly.
Alarms, reminders, and timers
A few weeks back, I was driving early in the morning, and out of the blue, my Apple Watch started vibrating. I stopped on the side, and it was my morning sleep alarm that was tapping my wrist.
Surprisingly, I had turned off the alarm that morning on my iPhone even before it had gone off, but for some reason, this change was not synced to my watch and the alarm went off at the set time.
So if you set an alarm on your iPhone or if your sleep schedule morning alarm goes off, it would also vibrate on your Apple Watch.
Secondly, when your Apple Watch timers or iPhone reminders go off, you will feel their vibration on your wrist.
I believe this is a part and parcel of using alarms and timers, but if you don’t want to get your iPhone’s alarm and timer alerts on your Apple Watch, you have the option to turn them off:
- Open the Watch app on your iPhone.
- Tap Clock from the My Watch tab.
- Turn off the switch for Push Alerts from iPhone.
App permissions
From time to time, some apps, especially Weather, will tap your wrist and show an alert on the watch screen asking your permission if it can use or continue using your location in the background.
Once again, this is the part of the watch experience.
Theatre Mode
Even when in Theater Mode, you feel a vibration on your wrist when an incoming notification hits your watch. As mentioned earlier, you can manage app notifications from the iPhone Watch app.
Other things that can vibrate your Apple Watch
Haptics is a big part of iOS and watchOS, and in addition to the above points, there are several other instances where your Apple Watch may vibrate. This includes:
- Rotating the Digital Crown (which you can turn off)
- Using the watch as iPhone’s camera remote
- Navigating in Apple Maps
- Triggering emergency SOS
- When your watch detects you have fallen down
- Playing a sound via Find My and more…
These are part of the experience, and you can’t turn off most of these vibrations. And to be fair, there is no need to do so in the first place.
After following the above tips, your watch should no longer vibrate out of the blue. But in case it still does, update it to the latest version of watchOS. If that doesn’t help, erase your Apple Watch and set it up again.