What Is the Red Dot on Your Apple Watch?


Getting a new Apple Watch can be pretty exciting, isn’t it? Especially if it’s your first Apple Watch ever. It has a lot of promising features that you can optimize if you know how to use it properly. It’s also a great accessory for when you’re out and about. You can also use it to track your workout progress. Sync it to your iPhone and you basically have an iPhone in a watch.

Now, if you’re a new Apple Watch user, it’s only understandable that you don’t know every feature that it has yet. Once you’ve synced it to your iPhone, there may be times that you’ve noticed a small red dot appearing at the top of the screen of your Apple Watch. Before you start panicking and thinking that it might be a warning sign of some sort, relax a little.

The top of the screen of your Apple Watch serves as an area for several status icons. That red dot symbol you’re seeing is just among those watchOS status icons that serve a purpose to make your life easier. These status icons are designed to let users know if there are certain events happening on your Apple Watch. An example would be an airplane icon appearing at the top of your Apple Watch screen if you enabled Airplane Mode.

Proceeding to the red dot symbol, it simply indicates that you have received a notification. To be precise, this symbol tells you that you have unread notifications. This is especially useful if you’re busy doing something and you might have forgotten to check your iPhone for any updates. Once you check the time on your Apple Watch, that red dot symbol will remind you of unread updates.

To remove the red dot on your screen, you will have to check your notifications. You have two options to make that red dot disappear:

  1. Respond to the notifications you received by tapping on it. Doing so automatically means you’ve already read the notification.
  2. If you don’t feel like checking out the update, you can just clear the notifications. You can do this by swiping the specific notification to the left. Doing so will show you options on the right side of the notification. Tap the X button to clear the notification.

Now, if you wish to read these notifications, here are the basic steps to follow:

  1. Make sure that your Apple Watch is turned on, of course. From the top of your screen, swipe down. This should allow you to see all the new notifications you’ve received so far.
  2. Just tap each notification to read them one by one. If you want to scroll through the full list of all your notifications, you can simply swipe up or down the screen. You may also opt to use the Digital Crown of your Apple Watch to scroll through the list if you prefer.
  3. From the instruction above, you already know how to clear a notification one by one. However, you can also delete them altogether. Simply scroll to the bottom of the notifications list. You will see a Dismiss button. Tap on it and you’re good to go. The red dot symbol on your Apple Watch should disappear after this.

Do note that once you’ve cleared your notifications on your Apple Watch, the same will also happen on your iPhone if they’re synced together. Your Apple Watch kind of serves as the extension arm of your iPhone. This is quite the benefit for people who keep their iPhones in their bags and can’t be bothered to take it out every single time. This feature is also quite useful for people always on the go or out and about and can’t take their iPhone out. You also have the option to customize this setting on your iPhone by doing these steps:

  1. Tap on the Apple Watch app.
  2. Select My Watch and head on to Notifications.
  3. Choose the app whose notifications you wish to customize.
  4. Majority of apps will offer you two options. You can choose to either mirror your iPhone or customize it. Simply tap on Custom if you wish to customize.

On the other hand, not everyone likes seeing the red dot symbol on their Apple Watch. You can actually disable this feature so that it will no longer appear every time you receive a notification. Here are the steps to take to disable this feature:

  1. Using your iPhone, tap on the Apple Watch app.
  2. Select Notifications.
  3. You will find Notification Indicators. On the right side of this option, toggle it off. Now, the red dot will no longer appear on your Apple Watch screen for any notifications.

If you ever change your mind and wish to enable this useful feature again, you can just follow the same steps and toggle the option back on. The toggle should turn green, which would indicate that this feature is enabled again.


Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo is a stalwart in the tech journalism community, has been chronicling the ever-evolving world of Apple products and innovations for over a decade. As a Senior Author at Apple Gazette, Kokou combines a deep passion for technology with an innate ability to translate complex tech jargon into relatable insights for everyday users.

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