The Apple Watch is an excellent companion for swimming, surfing, or simply tracking your workout in the rain. However, capacitive touchscreens rely on the electrical conductivity of your skin to register taps and swipes. Because water is also conductive, submerged screens often misinterpret water splashes as frantic, random finger taps.
To prevent this, Apple includes a feature called Water Lock. When activated, Water Lock completely disables touch input on your Apple Watch screen. Once you are out of the water, turning the feature off will play a specific tone that physically ejects trapped water from the watch’s speaker grill.
How to Turn On Water Lock
You should turn on Water Lock right before you jump into the pool or step into the shower.
- On your Apple Watch face, press the Side Button (the flat button below the Digital Crown) to open the Control Center. Note: If you are running an older version of watchOS (watchOS 9 or earlier), you open the Control Center by swiping up from the bottom of the screen instead.
- Scroll through the Control Center icons until you find the icon that looks like a water droplet.
- Tap the water droplet icon.
You will immediately see a small blue water droplet icon at the top of your watch face, indicating that Water Lock is active. If you try to tap or swipe the screen, it will not respond.
How to Turn Off Water Lock and Eject Water
When you are finished with your water activity, you need to disable the lock to use your watch normally again.
- Press and hold the Digital Crown on the side of your Apple Watch.
- Keep holding it as the screen displays a blue circle filling up with water.
- Once the circle is full, the watch will emit a series of rapid, buzzing tones. This is not a glitch; the speaker is using sound waves to force any remaining water out of the speaker cavity.
Once the tones stop, a message will appear confirming that the water has been ejected, and your touchscreen will be fully responsive once again.
Tip: If you start a “Pool Swim” or “Open Water Swim” workout using the native Apple Workout app, your Apple Watch will automatically turn on Water Lock for you.