The Palm Gesture
The Apple Watch features a highly specific gesture control designed for quick silencing. By default, if your watch starts ringing loudly in a quiet room, you can simply take your opposite hand and completely cover the watch face for three seconds. The ambient light sensors and touch digitizer will detect the palm, instantly silence the alarm, and put the watch to sleep. While this is a brilliant physical shortcut, it can trigger accidentally if you frequently cross your arms or sleep with your hand resting over your wrist, resulting in missed alarms. If you prefer to mute the watch manually via the buttons, you must disable the palm sensor.
How to Turn Off Cover to Mute
You can completely deactivate the palm-silencing gesture via the Sound settings.
- Open the Settings app directly on your Apple Watch (the grey gear icon).
- Scroll down the main list and tap on Sounds & Haptics.
- Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the Haptics section.
- Look for the master toggle switch labeled Cover to Mute.
- Toggle this switch to the Off position (the green background will disappear).
Manual Silencing Only
The change is instantaneous. The Apple Watch will completely sever the gesture engine from the audio controller. If an alarm goes off or a phone call comes in, covering the screen with your hand will simply turn off the display, but it will absolutely not silence the audio. To mute an incoming call, you must now explicitly press the Digital Crown or tap the decline button on the screen.