Apple Watch Activity/Fitness coaching can show progress updates and reminders during the day. If those alerts are distracting, you can adjust Activity-related notifications without turning off every Apple Watch notification.
Change Activity notifications from the iPhone
- Open the Watch app on the paired iPhone.
- Open the notification or Activity/Fitness settings available for your watchOS version.
- Review options such as coaching, goal completions, special challenges, stand reminders, and daily summaries.
- Turn off only the progress or coaching alerts you do not want.
- Wear the watch through a normal day and confirm that the unwanted alert no longer appears.
Keep useful health and safety alerts separate
Activity coaching is not the same category as every health, heart, medication, fall-detection, or emergency notification. Do not broadly disable health notifications just to silence motivational progress messages. Review each category according to what you actually want to receive.
If the setting name looks different
Apple has changed Activity and Fitness terminology and reorganized Watch app menus over time. Older instructions may refer to “Progress Updates” while a newer watchOS/iOS combination may expose related coaching and notification controls under different labels.
Also check whether a Focus mode is suppressing or allowing alerts in ways that make notification behavior seem inconsistent. Focus changes delivery behavior, while disabling an Activity notification changes whether that particular type of alert is generated.
If you share Activity with friends, sharing notifications can have their own controls. Turning off a coaching alert does not necessarily stop friend-related Activity notifications.
Kermit Matthews is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with more than a decade of experience writing technology guides. He has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Computer Science and has spent much of his professional career in IT management.
He specializes in writing content about iPhones, Android devices, Microsoft Office, and many other popular applications and devices.