Apple Watch Won't Mirror iPhone Do Not Disturb Settings

For the past few weeks I’ve been wearing my Apple Watch, I’ve been putting up with one major annoying factor: an iMessage group chat set to “Do Not Disturb” still disturbs my wrist.

I have some group chats that consist of five or more people. Some are family, some are friends, some are acquaintances. And while I enjoy keeping in touch with everyone, I do not want my phone vibrating or sounding off every time I get a message from one of them. For this reason, I’m super happy that iMessage has a “Do Not Disturb” setting you can turn on for specific chats. This lets me get the messages at my convenience, without blowing up my phone or my patience. Ahh, peace.

There’s only one snag, and it’s a big one: This does not work on the Apple Watch. I have my Watch set to “mirror” my iPhone, which should also presumably mirror its Do Not Disturb settings. I expect such silent messages to be sent to my Watch, but I definitely don’t expect them to be sent to my wrist with a tap or buzz.

But nope, that doesn’t work. Tap, tap, tap is all I feel if I have Do Not Disturb set to mirror my iPhone. I’ve restarted both devices, turned those settings off and back on, jumped out of chats and back in again, and nothing seems to fix it. I can only assume it’s a bug, and given that multiple people on Apple’s Discussion Forum have also acknowledged the problem, I can only hope Apple rolls out a fix as soon as possible. As it stands right now, this inability to quiet specific Message threads goes against one of the main use cases so many of use want out of out Apple Watches. It’s a real problem.

If you’ve also been frustrated by this issue and have somehow found a workaround I don’t know about, be sure to let me know in the comments. So far, my only course of action is to tell the Messages app not to tap me for any messages, which means I get zero taps from my mom, wife, and the few others with whom I share a direct line 24-7. That’s hardly a solution, and I won’t rest until I find one.

Because my Apple Watch alerts won’t let me.