Do notifications only work sporadically for anyone else?

[chanticleerschest]

I really love my watch, but I find that receiving notifications (and text messages) is extremely hit and miss.

Most of the time, notifications will only appear on my phone, not on my watch. This is even the case when my phone's locked and I haven't used it for a while - my watch says that it's connected to the phone, but notifications won't appear.

If they do appear, it's not unusual for the phone to display them at the same time.

Text messages (whether they're iMessages or not) are very odd. Any notification on my watch not only shows the new message but also the first message I'd received from that contact since activating my watch, despite having read and dismissed those messages days/weeks ago. Looking at the messages app on the watch, only messages for which I've received a notification on my watch are displayed, not the full conversation like on my phone.

I've tried:

• Wiping and reconnecting my watch numerous times
• Fiddling around with notification settings in the Watch app on my phone
• Making sure that silent mode is turned off

...but to no avail.

I'm not sure why this is happening. Is it that the OS isn't great and this is a common issue? Could it be that I'm constantly running a VPN on my phone and that interferes with how the watch communicates with the phone? Is it a faulty watch?

Grateful for any experiences that anyone else might have had that are similar.

 

[warburg]

I returned my first Apple Watch for this reason. The second watch is somewhat better, but notifications are still sporadic and somewhat at random. Don't forget that you will only receive notifications if your iPhone is locked.

 

[chanticleerschest]

I returned my first Apple Watch for this reason. The second watch is somewhat better, but notifications are still sporadic and somewhat at random. Don't forget that you will only receive notifications if your iPhone is locked.

Thanks. Phone's always locked when not in use; it's usually just sat on my desk.

I might do another wipe-and-reset - both the phone and the watch - and see if this persists.