How to Turn Off Your Apple Watch’s Most Annoying New Feature

Take back control over your Apple Watch’s watch face.

Apple Watch turn off Live Activities featurePhoto by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

When Apple rolled out watchOS 11 this past fall, it brought a number of key features to your Apple Watch. Some of the standouts included the ability to pause your Activity Rings, change your workout goals for different days, and turn your Apple TV off right from your wrist.

It also brought Live Activities to your Apple Watch. This displays timely information from apps you’re currently using — such as playback controls if you’re listening to music or watching Apple TV, fitness metrics if you’re working out, or delivery tracking if you’re waiting for an order — right on your wrist.

However, seeing Live Activities every time you glance at your wrist can be quite annoying — especially if you have a watch face that’s carefully curated or a special photo.

Also, since Live Activities integrates into your Apple Watch’s Smart Stack, which you can access with a quick swipe up from the bottom of the screen or a quick turn of the Digital Crown, you don’t need them to take over your watch face all them time.

The good news is that you can adjust this with a quick setting change.

Apple Watch turn off Live Activities feature
You can easily disable Live Activities from auto-launching on your Apple Watch.
Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

Turn off Live Activities on your Apple Watch

You can adjust the Live Activities settings in two ways: from your iPhone’s Watch app or directly on your Apple Watch. They both have the same effect.

On your Apple Watch:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Scroll down and select Smart Stack.
  3. Select Live Activities.
  4. Toggle off Auto-Launch Live Activities.

On your iPhone:

  1. Open the Watch app on your iPhone.
  2. Select Smart Stack.
  3. Toggle off Auto-Launch Live Activities.

With the “auto-launch” of Live Activities disabled, you’ll still be able to access them via your Apple Watch’s Smart Stack (which, again, you can quickly access with swipe up from the bottom of the screen or turn of the Digital Crown).

From this screen (after following the above steps), you have a couple other options, too. You can disable Live Activities completely on your Apple Watch. Or you can have them blurred out when your wrist is down (so people can’t peep what you’re listening to.

Additionally, if you just don’t want playback controls (for streaming music or videos) to appear in your Live Activities, you can disable just those — follow the same above steps, select “Media apps” and toggle off “Allow Live Activities.”