The Aggressive Fitness Nudge
The Apple Watch is designed to prevent you from living a completely sedentary lifestyle. By default, the Activity app monitors your movement. If you have been sitting in a chair for the first 50 minutes of an hour, the watch will aggressively buzz your wrist and display a full-screen notification commanding you to “Time to stand!” While this is helpful for office workers, it is incredibly annoying if you are stuck on a six-hour international flight, recovering from an injury in bed, or sitting through a long movie at the theater. If you find these constant interruptions patronizing or useless for your lifestyle, you can permanently disable the stand reminders.
How to Turn Off Stand Reminders
You control the Activity notifications from the companion Watch app on your paired iPhone.
- Open the Watch app on your iPhone.
- Ensure you are on the My Watch tab at the bottom left of the screen.
- Scroll down the list of installed applications and tap on Activity.
- At the very top of the menu, you will see a toggle switch labeled Stand Reminders.
- Tap the switch to turn it Off (the green background will disappear).
What Actually Happens?
Disabling this switch does not break the fitness tracking capabilities of the Apple Watch. The internal gyroscope and accelerometer will still silently monitor your movement in the background. If you happen to stand up and walk around for a minute to get a glass of water, the watch will still correctly credit you with a “Stand Hour” and fill in your blue Activity ring. The only thing you have disabled is the annoying 50-minute notification buzzing your wrist.