I loved my Apple Watch, but I barely wear it now

I had a few early Android smartwatches, like the Moto 360, but they never clicked for me. Poor battery life and functionality that felt tacked-on instead of integrated with my phone put me off.

After switching to iPhone in 2020, I got an Apple Watch SE and actually enjoyed using a smartwatch for the first time. And while I upgraded to an Apple Watch Series 9 in 2023, I’ve found myself wearing the smartwatch less and less lately.

Why the Apple Watch is the best of its kind

Credit: Aryan Surendranath/MakeUseOf

The first-gen Apple Watch SE I used in the past, and my Series 9 (our review), are both great smartwatches. I appreciate how the OS feels complete and not like a tech demo. Having stripped-down versions of apps on my wrist is useful for reducing the need to look at my phone and quickly accessing core functionality.

Its battery life is solid, and it has great fitness and health features without feeling like a dedicated fitness device. It’s gotten useful upgrades through OS updates; I particularly appreciate the app cluster being in a clean column instead of a mess.

But despite all these great features and previously wearing my watch almost every day, I’ve found myself only wearing it when I go out (which is a few times per week at most) lately. After thinking about it, I’ve realized this is for a few reasons.

I’m sick of notifications

Credit: Brent Dirks / MakeUseOf

The biggest reason I’m not interested in wearing my Apple Watch all the time anymore is that I have major notification fatigue. I’m tired of getting notifications from every possible source, and I’ve done everything I can to reduce them and put them back under my control.

Yes, you can control your Apple Watch notifications so that not all alerts from your phone make it to your watch. This is a vital first step, and it helps a lot. But it still results in more than I want.

The biggest problem is that most of the notifications I want can still be disruptive, depending on how other people message. Telegram, WhatsApp, and Messages are the main apps I want to get alerts from.

But when group chats start getting busy, or a friend has poor messaging etiquette and “Shatner texts” by sending seven messages for what should be one, I want to throw my watch across the room. I can’t stand getting constant alerts; it makes me feel that there’s an emergency and someone is trying to get my attention.

Notification management needs more options

Credit: Bryan M. Wolfe / MakeUseOf

On iPhone, I sort notifications into three major groups: disabled entirely, silently sent to Notification Center, or those that vibrate and wake up the screen. If the third type of notification gets busy on my phone, I can flip my device over so I don’t see the constant lighting up.

But on a watch, you can’t ignore the buzzing on your wrist, so the best option is to enable Do Not Disturb. That works, but then I won’t see any notifications, which defeats half the point of using a smartwatch.

I recognize that this is a problem with how I treat notifications and not inherent to the Apple Watch itself. But a big part of why I’ve mostly stopped wearing it is part of a bigger push to avoid notifications constantly taking me out of what I’m doing. I want to respond to them on my own time.

I turn off most group chat notifications for the same reason, but that’s imperfect since I’m not aware of conversations until I manually check. Apps like BuzzKill on Android are a great answer to this issue, as they allow you to “cool down” notifications if a chat gets busy. But this isn’t an option on iPhone.

I don’t care enough about the fitness features

While I try to stay generally healthy, I’ve never been a fitness enthusiast; the health features on my various smartwatches, Fitbits, and Apple Watches haven’t changed that. For a while, I did my best to move for 12 hours each day and close the blue ring. But that felt like accomplishing an arbitrary goal rather than building a true healthy habit.

In the past two years, I’ve done my best to use my rowing machine consistently, but my Apple Watch hasn’t played any part in this. The machine’s app links with Apple Health, so it logs my workouts there even when I don’t wear my watch. Wearing my Apple Watch displays my heart rate on my phone’s display through the app as I row, which is interesting but not essential.

I still wear my Apple Watch when I take a walk with my wife, as it’s interesting to see how far we walk and the estimated calories burned. But I don’t look back at this information later; it’s only interesting in the moment. In theory, I’d use this information, but in practice, I don’t care.

Its other features aren’t vital, either

The Apple Watch packs a lot of neat features, but none of them felt crucial enough to keep wearing it for.

Messaging or launching music by voice is useful, but it quickly breaks down for anything longer or more complicated, so I prefer to use my phone. Remote camera control is cool, but it’s something I always forget to use.

I like having the current temperature at a glance, but this isn’t difficult to check on my phone. Plus, it can take a minute or more to load this information when first putting on my watch. That’s a pain when I’m running out the door and want to quickly check whether I’ll need a jacket.

I feel the same way about most of the other features and complications. Having Shazam, a sound level meter, a compass, and similar all on my wrist is cool, but I don’t use them frequently.

In total, the Apple Watch has a lot of cool little tricks that I appreciate at various times. But none of them feel important enough to wear the device all the time, especially given the negatives that come along with that for me.

It’s yet another device to charge and maintain

Every new device you buy is another one with a battery to manage and apps to update. While this isn’t terrible with the Apple Watch, it’s another small factor that contributed to changing my mindset about the device.

We know keeping a device charging all the time isn’t good for its long-term battery health, but I also wanted my watch to be ready when I needed it. The Apple Watch has its own magnetic charger, so when traveling, you have to bring that separate charger and take up more room.

Watch apps update when your iPhone apps do, but you have to set a time to install watchOS updates. This isn’t usually a problem, though I have had cases where an update refused to install multiple times.

There are longer-term concerns, as well. Since the Apple Watch is on your wrist all day, there’s greater potential to scratch it or bang it against something as you walk. And like any other piece of tech, the watch becomes outdated eventually, which you then have to pay to upgrade.

None of these issues is massive on its own. But taking all the above in mind, I asked myself if wearing the watch all the time was really worth it.

I fell out of love with my Apple Watch

I still think the Apple Watch is a cool device, but I’ve found it fitting into my life less and less. What once struck me as the best smartwatch I’d ever used slowly became a largely unnecessary accessory I don’t need to wear all the time.

I appreciate it when I’m out so I can see incoming notifications without pulling out my phone, and nothing about the device itself has put me off using it. It’s a reflection of my changing priorities around tech and notifications.

And perhaps above all, I don’t want an Apple Watch to be a distraction when I’m with people I care about. We all know how it feels when someone is more interested in their Apple Watch alerts than in what you’re saying to them.