At Home with Tech

Does your Apple Watch sometimes make you feel like your existence is fracturing? (Imagery generated by Adobe Firefly) Well, it could be time to cut back on all that haptic feedback from too many chatty apps on your iPhone. Here’s how.

It used to be all the annoying pings from my iPhone. They were so distracting. So, I shut it down and muted my digital companion. Sure, my iPhone would still perform its vibration dance. But that was an imperfect fix, as I would miss some alerts that were actually important.

I thought I had solved the problem when I bought my Apple Watch, strapped it on for the first time and gleamed as it took over as my digital-communications overlord.

Zapped and Trapped
With its haptic-vibration superpower, my Apple Watch could silently communicate with me as if we were neurally connected (all with a few secret taps to my wrist). Then, I could easily glance over at my Apple Watch’s face and almost imperceptibly consume the headline of whatever information one of my iPhone’s apps was sending me.

I no longer had to rudely pull out my iPhone from my pocket to discover what was going on in my world.

It was perfect. But years later, I woke up one morning while it was still dark, and I realized I was a perfect prisoner.

What was I doing? I had become a helpless mouse in a case, zapped by miniscule amounts of electricity through my wrist to pay attention to incoming messages.

Of course, there’s no actual electricity involved. But when that little buzz comes in, how important is it? How are you supposed to know?

So, you HAVE to look.

A Mission for John Connor
My Apple Watch had been perfectly serving up its endless flow of vibration-proclamations onto my left wrist, like a Terminator that can’t be stopped. What’s a human to do? Apparently, I had passively adapted to the onslaught and adjusted into an overwhelmed numbness.

Finally, in this moment of pre-dawn pitch black, I decided I needed to take back control and reduce the data stream. I had to pair back the haptic feedback to what mattered most.

The fix came down to prioritizing which apps were allowed to use haptic feedback.

• Yeah, you can do that
• Yes, it’s in the menu settings
• Human suffering no longer required

The only twist is you don’t access Skynet through your Apple Watch. You go in through your iPhone.

I embodied my inner John Connor from “The Terminator” movies and got to work.

How to Adjust Apple Watch’s Haptic Feedback Settings
Here are the steps to gain back haptic control.

• On your iPhone that’s linked to your Apple Watch, go to the ‘Watch’ app
• Tap Notifications
• Go into each listed app and adjust as needed
• Also scroll down to “Mirror iPhone Alerts from”
• Deselect the ones that don’t need haptic access to your wrist

When I began this review, I immediately saw that so many apps had default access to my wrist. Access granted? Nope.

You can also globally turn off Haptic Alerts under Sounds & Haptics, but I think that’s an extreme move (swinging the vibration-pendulum too far in the other direction).

Free Yourself
Ultimately, this is just another example that demonstrates if you want control over your life, you’ve got to put in the work. (And it’s not really that hard).

There’s nothing inherently wrong with your apps trying to reach out and tap you. I think we all just need to actively manage that process.

The default haptic settings are, at best, a starting point. At their worst, they can become a real ball and chain for your day.

Even if you set it, you should never forget it.

Time to break free!