How to Turn Off Activity Sharing Notifications on Your Apple Watch

Melissa Holt Read more January 12, 2018

The Apple Watch has a feature called Activity Sharing, which lets you share your activity stats, workouts, and other data tracked by the Activity app with your friends. It’s a great way to see what types of workouts your gym buddies are doing and stay motivated (or demotivated, I guess, depending on your friends).
But as neat and helpful as Activity Sharing may be, one thing that can quickly become annoying is the constant stream of notifications it shows you when you turn it on. Jamie completed a workout! Mark closed all of his rings! Sharon is just completely better than you are at everything. Great. Super.
Thankfully, it’s easy to turn these notifications off, so that you only see your friend’s Activity updates when you check the app.

How to Turn Off Activity Sharing Notifications on Your Apple Watch

Turn Off All Activity Sharing Notifications

If you’d like to turn off all Activity Sharing notifications, first grab your iPhone and open the Watch app. You probably know this but I’ll just clarify here that you need to be doing this on the iPhone that’s currently paired with your Apple Watch.

In the Watch app, make sure you’re on the My Watch tab and then select Notifications.

Next, select Activity.

Finally, find the toggle labeled Activity Sharing Notifications and tap to turn it off.

As I mentioned, turning this option off means that you won’t see any notifications for anyone.

Turn Off Activity Sharing Notifications for Individual Contacts

Instead of turning off Activity Sharing notifications for everyone, what if you just want to turn them off for one person (darn you, Sharon)? In this case, grab your iPhone and head to the Activity app.

Select the Sharing tab at the bottom of the screen and you’ll see a list of everyone you’re currently sharing Activity data with.

And no, I didn’t just pick a day where I was on top. I promise. Maybe.

From that screen, tap a person’s activity to be taken to the details on him or her.

Once that person is selected, find and tap Mute Notifications to turn off Activity Sharing notifications for just this individual contact. You can turn off notifications for other contacts by repeating these steps for each of them, and you can turn notifications back on again by returning to this screen and tapping Unmute Notifications.