The Social Workout Spam
The Apple Watch features a social fitness system called “Activity Sharing.” If you invite your friends or family members to share their activity rings, you can see their daily progress to help motivate each other. However, by default, the Apple Watch aggressively pushes a notification to your wrist every single time one of your friends completes a workout or closes all three of their daily rings. If you share your activity with five highly active people, your watch will constantly buzz throughout the day with alerts about their gym sessions. You can maintain the sharing connection while completely silencing the intrusive notifications.
How to Turn Off Activity Sharing Alerts
You can mute the social fitness broadcasts via the Activity settings.
- Open the Settings app directly on your Apple Watch (the grey gear icon).
- Scroll down the main list and tap on Activity.
- Look for the section labeled “Activity Sharing.”
- Tap on Activity Sharing Notifications.
- Select the Off option.
Silent Motivation
The change is instantaneous. The Apple Watch will immediately stop throwing push notifications onto your screen when your friends exercise. The background connection remains fully active; you can still manually open the Fitness app on your iPhone or the Activity app on your watch at any time to check their progress and see who is winning the week. You simply will no longer be interrupted by real-time updates while you are trying to work or relax.