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Apple Watch not vibration for messages

My Apple Watch series 3 is not vibrating when I receive text messages anymore. It still vibrates for all other alerts. I have made sure the haptic setting for messages is on and prominent. I’ve used both “mirror my iPhone” and custom to get a haptic notification for texts but nothing has worked. I’ve factory reset my watch 2 times and reset my IPhone 8 trying to fix the problem but nothing has helped. I also checked and am running the most current software.

Apple Watch

Posted on Jan 30, 2020 7:43 PM

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Posted on Feb 13, 2020 10:29 AM

Ok so I’ve got an Apple Watch series 5. Only had it since Oct 2019, I actually wasn’t sure when it stopped but like you haptic was not tapping my wrist for messages notifications. Haptic taps we’re working for everything else, fb messenger, calendar, like literally every other notification was haptic tapping.


I went through everything I could think of. All the settings. Resets. Ensured up to date OS. I tried all of it. Then talked to Apple. Ended up having a new watch sent and I sent back the old one. New watch still exact same problem.


talked to Apple again, the support person told me a setting I hadn’t tried yet, on the phone for the phones messages settings-messages-send and receive set “start new conversations from”, made that my Apple ID not my phone number... was all excited, still didn’t fix it.


so drum roll please, I went to bed, got up the next morning, figured I would just continue changing things, finally found it. And from my experience, what worked for me may not work for you, but it doesn’t hurt to try:


the way I had haptic set up for my phone I didn’t have any vibration set on my phone. BUT not only that, there’s also a second part to that, you can make custom vibrations for the phone, and in that menu I had it set to “none”


so when I changed that it some how undid the issue.


so on the phone: Settings-Notifications-Messages-Sounds-Vibrations- and in there I just created a custom vibration.


right away after changing that I had the watch set to mirror the phone for messages notifications, IT WORKED, then after I changed things back, back to the way it was before even when it didn’t work, and it worked. lol 😂


I wish you luck and hopefully this works for you.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 13, 2020 10:29 AM in response to austinwatch

Ok so I’ve got an Apple Watch series 5. Only had it since Oct 2019, I actually wasn’t sure when it stopped but like you haptic was not tapping my wrist for messages notifications. Haptic taps we’re working for everything else, fb messenger, calendar, like literally every other notification was haptic tapping.


I went through everything I could think of. All the settings. Resets. Ensured up to date OS. I tried all of it. Then talked to Apple. Ended up having a new watch sent and I sent back the old one. New watch still exact same problem.


talked to Apple again, the support person told me a setting I hadn’t tried yet, on the phone for the phones messages settings-messages-send and receive set “start new conversations from”, made that my Apple ID not my phone number... was all excited, still didn’t fix it.


so drum roll please, I went to bed, got up the next morning, figured I would just continue changing things, finally found it. And from my experience, what worked for me may not work for you, but it doesn’t hurt to try:


the way I had haptic set up for my phone I didn’t have any vibration set on my phone. BUT not only that, there’s also a second part to that, you can make custom vibrations for the phone, and in that menu I had it set to “none”


so when I changed that it some how undid the issue.


so on the phone: Settings-Notifications-Messages-Sounds-Vibrations- and in there I just created a custom vibration.


right away after changing that I had the watch set to mirror the phone for messages notifications, IT WORKED, then after I changed things back, back to the way it was before even when it didn’t work, and it worked. lol 😂


I wish you luck and hopefully this works for you.

Feb 2, 2020 5:30 PM in response to austinwatch

Hi austinwatch,


Thanks for reaching out here in the Apple Support Communities. I understand that your Apple Watch is not vibrating for text messages.

I'm glad to help with this.


You've done some good troubleshooting already.


Make sure that you haven't missed anything in the different settings: Change the audio and notification settings on your Apple Watch


If all this steps have been done, some additional details could help:

  • Which app is not sending the alerts?
  • When did this issue begin happening?
  • Is anything different from when it was working until now, such as an update to the iOS or a new app?
  • When you factory reset, did you set up your Apple watch as a new device? If not, try doing that, to be sure that no settings come from the backup that could be causing this.


Take Care.


Feb 3, 2020 3:11 AM in response to CarlAVII

Hi Allen, thanks for the tips!!


Right now the only app not vibrating for notifications is the messages app. It will send me a notification as I’ve noticed if I look at my watch at the right time the message will show up as a notification but it never vibrates ONLY for the messages app.


As far as I can remember it started to happen kinda out of the blue. It’s been a problem for about a month, and when the newest software update came out I updated to that but the problem persisted.


When I did the factory reset, I did set up as a new watch but the problem still continued.

Apple Watch not vibration for messages

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