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Anyone else having notification issues after the 26.4 update?

steferrari

steferrari

macrumors member
Original poster
Since updating to watchOS 26.4, my Apple Watch (S11) sometimes doesn’t collect notifications overnight while in Sleep Focus.

Yesterday morning I woke up and the Watch showed no notifications, but my iPhone (charging next to my bed) had several, including WhatsApp, which weren’t mirrored to the Watch.

Before the update, this always worked perfectly, notifications were correctly silenced during Sleep Focus but still collected, I’d see the red dot at the top of the screen in the morning knowing that there were some.

Now it’s inconsistent: sometimes it shows none, other times only some notifications appear and others are missing… and the red dot isn’t showing anymore either.

I’ve already restarted both the Watch and the iPhone, multiple times, but it’s still happening.

I mentioned this in the Apple Watch subreddit and some people confirmed they’re having the same issue.

Anyone else?
 
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I managed to replicate the issue even during the day: put your Watch in Sleep Focus, then send yourself a series of WhatsApp messages from a friend’s or family member’s iPhone. You can even space them out by a minute or two. You'll see that some notifications appear, some are completely missed. And as I said, the red dot indicating unread notifications is no longer there while Sleep Focus is on. Interestingly, everything works perfectly if no Focus mode is active, so this seems directly tied to Focus. It’s not just WhatsApp, it also happens with other apps.

Please try to replicate this and let me know if you see the same pattern.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who enables Sleep Focus before going to bed, so this is quite an annoying issue for those who, like me, check notifications on the Watch in the morning before grabbing their phone.
 
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This morning was one of the worst so far.

After waking up, I checked my Watch and only saw two WhatsApp notifications.

Then I grabbed my iPhone, and overnight it had received:

• 11x WhatsApp
• 2x Reddit
• 2x Locket
• 1x Amazon

So, while on Sleep Focus, the Watch failed to collect almost all of them.

This wasn’t happening at all with 26.3, and it’s the same Watch and the same iPhone.

I’m a bit surprised this hasn’t gained more traction yet. As I mentioned, I opened a post on Reddit and a few users confirmed the issue, but I honestly expected it to be more widespread by now.

I’ve already reported it to Apple multiple times through feedback, so I really hope we’ll see a fix soon, maybe in a 26.4.1 update.
 
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Thanks. Plenty of people do, though. I’ve had confirmations here, on Reddit, and on the Apple Community, so I think it’s quite clear at this point that something is wrong.

Maybe, for some reason, it only affects certain Watch models. Or maybe the issue is there but not everyone has noticed it yet.

It’s not like it misses all notifications, sometimes it skips just a couple out of twenty, so if you’re not paying close attention, you might not notice it.

Even the fact that the red dot no longer appears when there are unread notifications is already an indication that something isn’t working as it should compared to 26.3.

Hopefully this will be fixed in 26.5, even if it doesn’t affect everyone.
 
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I have the exact same issue with my Series 10 running 26.4. It’s only when in Sleep Focus that many notifications aren’t getting mirrored from my iPhone. During the day it all works fine.

Good to see that it may have been fixed in 26.5.
 
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Installed 26.5 beta 3 a couple of days ago and the notification issue has improved but hasn't been fixed completely. I've been getting more notifications in Sleep Focus but still missing some from a couple of apps.
 
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mzanker said:
Installed 26.5 beta 3 a couple of days ago and the notification issue has improved but hasn't been fixed completely. I've been getting more notifications in Sleep Focus but still missing some from a couple of apps.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the update, not very encouraging.

A bit surprising how they’ve managed to break something so essential that was working perfectly.
 
I’ve been noticing this for weeks and thought I was going crazy.

This reminds me of when Apple broke the sync when dismissing notifications from the watch, they wouldn’t get dismissed from the phone back around watchOS 5 or 6. It took nearly two months for them to release an update that fixed it.

Then with watchOS 26, they (seemingly intentionally) broke dismissing Messages notifications with the swipe down. They no longer get marked read from the watch.

I really don’t understand why they can’t leave well enough alone with Apple Watch notification management.
 
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Seeing similar things but think it's more a sync issue in general.

Yesterday, deleted from the phone a Reminder scheduled for hours later in the day. None of my other gadgets notified, Watch did. So appears as syncing, in this case phone to Watch, is happening inconsistently.

Supposed to get two alerts on Watch at same time, one alerts, other sits in background. Delete both Reminders off the phone some time later but not immediately, the second Reminder suddenly will alert.
 
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mzanker said:
Still behaving the same way in the watchOS 26.5 RC.
Click to expand...

Thanks again for the constant updates. It looks like they didn’t look into it at all, which is quite worrying.

It’s strange because focus modes, like “Sleep”, are surely widely used, so you would expect them to notice an issue like this.

On my side, I’ve completely stopped using focus modes. When I go to bed, I simply enable Theatre Mode so the display won’t unnecessarily turn on while I sleep.

The downside is that the Watch vibrates if I receive a notification, but to be honest, such a short vibration isn’t enough to disturb me or wake me up.

At least I’m not missing any notifications.

Still, I would have expected them to fix something like this fairly quickly, perhaps even with a 26.4.1 release, let alone 26.5!

Let’s hope that one day it will work properly again, but at this point it could take months, which is annoying.
 
NoBoMac said:
Not going to be of any use, but, Focuses have been working as advertised for me. When I have a Focus that silences everything, it's been working.
Click to expand...

It's not that the mode itself isn't working for me.

It does, it correctly silences notifications and stores them in the notification center.

The problem is that, since 26.4, when this mode is enabled, some notifications get lost and are not mirrored from the iPhone, as others in this thread have also reported.

When the Focus mode is off, this never happens.
 
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At this point I don't expect it to be fixed on 26.5, as the issue still persists for me as well on 26.5 RC. I'm sure it has to do with the red dot disappearing all of a sudden, although I have noticed that notifications from native apps are stored correctly (such as missed calls or iMessages). For me at least, the problem occurs with third party notifications.
 
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Not sure if this will work but when I updated from OS 18 to 26, watch notifications were a mess especially for iMessage. Finally I unpaired and re-paired the watch and that fixed it.
 
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