What the Red Dot on Your Apple Watch Means, and the Other Status Icons at the Top

When your iPhone is locked and your Apple Watch isn't, the alerts go to your wrist. That's the routing Engadget describes: "If it is locked and your Watch is the one that's unlocked, it will send notifications to the wearable instead." The phone stays quiet and the watch takes the alert.

Whatever you don't read straight away is kept. Apple's notifications guide says: "If you don't read a notification when it arrives, it's saved in Notification Center. A red dot at the top of your watch face shows you have unread notifications."

So the dot points to that saved pile. Engadget describes it as notifications "you've yet to read and dismiss." Apple's status icon page has the short version: "Red dot: You've received a notification." The Apple Watch user guide adds what to do about it: "You have an unread notification. Swipe down on the watch face to read it."

Clearing it

Engadget gives two methods. For everything at once:

1. Swipe down on the watch face to open Notification Center.
2. Scroll to the top of the list.
3. Tap Clear All.

For a single notification, swipe left on it and tap the X. Clear All takes fewer swipes.

Hiding the dot instead

If the dot bothers you more than the notifications do, there's a switch for it. Apple's Apple Watch guide gives the path: open the Watch app on your iPhone, go to Notifications, and turn off Notifications Indicator. The same setting is also on the watch, under Settings, then Notifications. According to Apple, hiding the indicator does not stop alerts. How-To Geek has its own walkthrough, How to hide the red dot on an Apple Watch.

So the dot goes and the alerts stay, and Apple's notifications guide says anything you don't read when it arrives is saved in Notification Center. You just lose the reminder to go and look.

If the dot keeps coming back, Engadget and Apple cover two fixes: clear the list, or hide the indicator. Instructions for limiting which apps send alerts to the watch, or for notification mirroring, were not available at the time of writing.

When the screen or the sound stops behaving

Some of Apple's icons mean a mode is switched on that changes how the watch responds. If something seems wrong, check the top of the screen first. Here they are by symptom, using the wording in Apple's user guide and status icon page:

1. Screen ignores taps: the water drop means Water Lock is on. Apple says to press and hold the Digital Crown.
2. Screen stays dark when you raise your wrist: the orange masks mean Theater Mode is on and the watch is silenced.
3. Calls and alerts don't sound or light the screen: the crescent moon means Do Not Disturb is on.
4. Watch asking for a passcode: the blue lock means it's locked. Tap it and enter your passcode.

The masks and the moon are easy to mix up. Theater Mode silences the watch and keeps the display dark when you raise your wrist. Do Not Disturb stops calls and alerts from sounding or lighting the screen, and the user guide says alarms are still in effect.

Steps for switching off Theater Mode, Do Not Disturb, Airplane Mode and Sleep mode were not available at the time of writing.

Which connection the watch is using

Four icons describe the watch's connection. If a message you expected hasn't arrived, look at these before anything else. Apple describes them like this:

• Green bars: connected to a cellular network. The number of green bars indicates signal strength.
• Blue Wi-Fi: connected to Wi-Fi instead of your iPhone.
• Red iPhone: not connected to your iPhone.
• Orange airplane: Airplane Mode is on. Wireless is turned off, but nonwireless features are still available.

After a flight, look for the orange airplane first.

Two more icons cover sleep and power rather than connection or sound: the purple bed for Sleep mode and the yellow circle for Low Power Mode. Apple's status icon page gives each a one-line meaning.

Green, orange, blue and the rest

What about green, orange and blue? On Apple's status icon page and in the user guide, the red dot is the only symbol called a dot. The green, orange and blue entries are shapes: bars, an airplane, masks, a lock, a Wi-Fi symbol. Engadget's piece only covers the red dot, so every row below comes from one of those two Apple pages, named in the last column.

Apart from the red dot, only two rows come with instructions on these pages: the lock (tap and enter your passcode) and the water drop (press and hold the Digital Crown). For the rest, Apple says what the icon means and stops there.

If you see red at the top, look at the shape before you worry. On the status icon page, the red dot is about notifications. The red battery and the red iPhone are the red symbols about the watch itself: the battery is low, or the watch has lost its connection to your iPhone.