What Is the Red Dot on My Apple Watch? Detailed Answer!

Is your new Apple gadget giving you a hard time by making you wonder what is the annoying red dot that is lighting up on a side of your watch?

Well, that little red dot means that your watch is trying to tell you something, but don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with the device. Let’s see what it’s all about.

Contents show

How are Notifications Displayed on Your Apple Watch

Apple has made its devices work seamlessly together, meaning every piece of information you receive is instantly transmitted to your Apple Watch if the phone is on standby. Once the notification arrives, the watch vibrates, giving off a signal that a new notification has arrived. It can even receive and answer phone calls easily and conveniently.

To access the newly arrived notification, you need to interact with your watch since there is no need to look for your phone to read them. That is the convenience of the Apple ecosystem and its seamless data sharing between iOS devices.

The watch tells the user that new notifications have arrived by displaying small dots in the upper middle of the watch screen. Let’s take a look at what the red dot’s function on your Apple Watch is.

What Is the Red Dot on My Apple Watch?

The red dot on your Apple Watch screen informs you of newly arrived notifications and messages that you haven’t opened and read yet. It looks similar to the badges appearing on your iPhone’s apps whenever they have a notification to display. The only difference is that the red dot on your Apple Watch tells you about the summarized notifications from all the apps.

If you swipe down from the top of the Watch face when you see the red dot, you will access the quick notifications center. Once you read all the notifications, the red dot will disappear again until new notifications arrive.

Having the red dot display notifications is useful for many people, but some don’t like the look of it and want to know how to remove it. Let’s address that issue in the next section of this article.

How to Hide or Remove the Red Dot on Your Watch

You can do two things to modify the red dots’ behavior on your Apple Watch. You can either hide some of the notifications it displays or completely remove the red dot from the watch face and never see it again.

Turning off some of the red dot notifications

There is an option to modify which notifications the rod dot will light up for, and you can easily adjust it by changing the notification settings for each app individually. So if you don’t want the watch to display Facebook notifications, for example, you can turn them off via the Facebook app on your phone.

To do this, follow the steps below:

First, open the Watch app on your iPhone, and go into the Notifications tab.
Choose the app you wish to modify notifications from the list of available apps.
Select the “Notifications Off” option, which should be third on the list.

Completely removing the red dot from the Apple Watch screen

If you want to remove the red dot from your watch completely, you can do it in two ways. One way is through the watch itself, while the other is through your phone. Note that only Apple Watches running watchOS 7 support the option to remove the red dot completely, while previous versions of this OS do not. So if you’re running an older watchOS version, this might not work for you.

To remove the red dot from the watch, access the “Settings” app by tapping the gear icon. Then scroll until you find the “Notifications” tab and select it, after which you will turn off the “Notifications Indicator” option, completely disabling the red dot.

The same process can be done through your phone, but to do it, you need to open the Watch app first and select the “Notifications” tab. After that, simply disable the “Notifications indicator” option, and the modified settings will be transferred to your Apple Watch.

Why Is It a Good Idea to Sometimes Turn the Red Dot Off?

Now that you no longer have to keep asking yourself, “what is the red dot on my Apple Watch”, the next question is whether it is a good idea to have it constantly turned on. It turns out it isn’t.

Turning off this notification symbol on your Apple watch is a good idea if you want to remove constant distractions, especially when driving or if your work environment demands high concentration levels. Having something constantly distracting you and severing your attention span will lead to low productivity or even serious injury.

So if you prefer to go through all of your notifications at your own pace, then it is better to turn that little red dot off, relax and enjoy the moment.

Other Symbols and Their Respective Colors

Since we already covered the red dots’ function on your Apple Watch, for the sake of completeness, it’s a good idea to mention some of the most common symbols and their respective functions.

A green electricity symbol means that your watch is charging
A red electricity symbol means that your watch’s battery is low
A blue padlock symbol means that your Apple Watch is locked
A water drop symbolizes that your watch doesn’t respond to touches, and you must turn the Digital Crown to unlock it
A green iPhone icon symbolizes that your watch is successfully connected with your iPhone
A red iPhone with a diagonal line across it means that your Apple Watch has lost its connection with your iPhone
A red “X” mark means that your Apple Watch has lost its connection to a cellular network

Conclusion

If you’ve just purchased this amazing gadget and have been wondering, “what is the red dot on my Apple Watch and why it constantly keeps popping up”, then we hope by now we were able to clear any misconceptions you might have had about it in our article. The dot is a very convenient way of displaying newly arrived notifications, which you will become aware of by simply glancing at your watch.

Remember that the Apple Watch is a great companion in everyday life, but try to use it lightly.

What Is The Red Dot on My Apple Watch?