watchOS 5 comes with a neat new feature that automatically detects when you’ve started or ended a workout. After it’s been a couple of minutes, you’ll get a helpful notification asking if you want to start tracking the workout. At this point, it’s just a suggestion. Until you expressly choose an option from the notification, nothing will be tracked.
The same thing happens if you’ve stopped workout out but you forgot to end a workout. Both these features are useful to a subset of users. If you’re the forgetful kind, you’ll greatly appreciate the hits. But ultimately, that’s all they are. Unlike Fitbit, Apple Watch won’t start recording the workout in the background.
If you’re religious about tracking your workouts, these suggested notifications might be downright frustrating. If you’re using an older Apple Watch model, you might see a drop in battery life because of this feature as well. Thankfully, disabling this feature is quite easy.
Must read: watchOS 5: All the New and Hidden watchOS 5 Features
How to Disable Start and End Workout Notifications
Step 1: Open the Settings app on the Apple Watch.
Step 2: Go to the General -> Workout section.
Step 3: Here, turn off the Start Workout Reminder and End Workout Reminder features.
That’s it. You won’t see any more annoying notifications for starting or ending workouts!
Pro Tip: Use Siri To Start Workouts
Yes, the reminders can be annoying. But the process of starting a workout from the Workouts app can be tedious as well. Sometimes it can take 4 taps and a loading screen to get through. There’s an easy fix for this as well.
Just use Siri to start a workout. Just say something like “Start an indoor run” and boom, you’re in the Workouts app and the tracking has begun already. This is now even faster in watchOS 5 now that you can talk to Siri without even pressing the digital crown!
What does your workout setup on Apple Watch look like? Have you customized the details screen? Share with us in the comments below.