Get Mac notifications on your Apple Watch

What an Apple Watch can receive

An Apple Watch is paired with an iPhone, and its notifications come from two places: apps installed on the watch itself, and alerts mirrored from the paired iPhone. A Mac is not part of that arrangement. The watch can unlock a Mac and approve requests on it, but there is no setting that sends a Mac's notifications to the watch.

So the route has two legs. Get the Mac alert onto the iPhone as an ordinary iPhone notification, and let watchOS mirror it the way it mirrors any other app.

Set up the route: Mac, iPhone, watch

1. Forward Mac notifications to the iPhone. Install NotiFerry on the Mac and the free ntfy app on the iPhone, then confirm the phone test. The setup guide walks through it.
2. Let the watch mirror ntfy. On the iPhone, open the Watch app, go to My Watch, then Notifications, and scroll to Mirror iPhone Alerts From. Make sure ntfy is switched on.
3. Test it the way you will use it. Lock the iPhone and keep the watch on your wrist and unlocked. In NotiFerry on the Mac, press Send phone test. The test should arrive on the watch.

From then on, a new alert from a Mac app travels to the iPhone through ntfy and is offered to the watch like any other iPhone notification.

When it lands on the wrist and when on the phone

Apple shows a notification on the watch or on the iPhone, not both. Its support article on Apple Watch notifications gives the rule:

• If the iPhone is locked or asleep, the notification goes to the watch, unless the watch is locked.
• If the iPhone is unlocked, it appears on the iPhone instead.
• If the watch is locked, in Do Not Disturb, or disconnected from the iPhone, it goes to the iPhone.

Apple also notes that notifications from third-party apps reach the watch only while the paired iPhone is connected to a network. For this route that is always required anyway, because the iPhone receives the alert over the internet.

What you see on the watch

ntfy has no Apple Watch app, so the watch shows a mirrored iPhone notification: the title, the message, and a Dismiss button. The title names the source app, as macOS records it, followed by the notification's own title.

How much text follows is up to you. NotiFerry's default title-only mode sends the app and title and replaces the message with “New notification”, which suits a small screen that other people can glance at. Switch to the full notification if you want the body on your wrist, or to a generic alert if you want only a nudge.

If the watch stays silent

• Check the phone first. If the alert did not reach the iPhone, the watch has nothing to mirror. Unlock the phone and look in ntfy.
• Confirm mirroring for ntfy. Watch app, My Watch, Notifications, Mirror iPhone Alerts From.
• Lock the iPhone. While you are using the phone, notifications stay on the phone by design.
• Look for a shared Focus. Focus is shared across your devices by default. A Focus turned on at the Mac also applies to the iPhone, and the watch follows the iPhone. Add ntfy to the apps allowed in that Focus if you want Mac alerts while you work.
• Check the Mac. NotiFerry must show Forwarding, and the Mac must be awake.