The Medical Alerts
The Apple Watch constantly monitors your resting heart rate in the background while you are sitting still. If the optical sensor detects that your heart rate has suddenly spiked above 120 beats per minute, or crashed below 40 beats per minute for an extended period of 10 minutes while you appear to be inactive, it will trigger a severe medical notification on your wrist. While this feature has famously saved lives by detecting early signs of atrial fibrillation, it can be highly alarming. If you have a known medical condition that naturally causes these fluctuations, or if you simply do not want your smartwatch acting as a diagnostic medical tool, you can disable the alerts.
How to Turn Off Heart Rate Notifications
You can completely deactivate the background threshold monitoring via the Heart settings.
- Open the Settings app directly on your Apple Watch (the grey gear icon).
- Scroll down the main list and tap on Heart.
- Look for the two sections labeled “High Heart Rate Notifications” and “Low Heart Rate Notifications.”
- Tap on High Heart Rate Notifications.
- Scroll to the very top of the list and select Off.
- Tap the back arrow, then tap on Low Heart Rate Notifications.
- Scroll to the very top of the list and select Off.
Silent Monitoring
The change is instantaneous. The Apple Watch will continue to record your heart rate data and sync it to the Health app on your iPhone so you can review it later with your doctor. However, the watch will completely stop analyzing the data for emergency thresholds, guaranteeing that it will never again interrupt your day with a terrifying medical warning.