Not a lot of people may have experienced this but, certainly, some of you have. Those random vibrations that your Apple Watch emits so suddenly, what are those? It’s not unusual for the Apple Watch to vibrate with no new notifications or any apparent reason at all. Some people call them “ghost vibration” or “phantom vibration.” Is it really a thing with the Apple Watch.
It started with the release of the watchOS 3.0 that some customers started feeling these random vibrations. Some feel it when they suddenly stand up or start moving. The number one solution to this is to reboot or restart your Apple Watch. There’s a high chance that there’s just a software glitch and a reboot should fix that right up.
Another reason why your Apple Watch is vibrating randomly is you might have set it to vibrate on certain occasions, e.g. elevated heart rate. If your device notices an abnormal heart rate through its heart rate sensor, it will vibrate and warn you of this event.
On the other hand, this random vibration might actually be a pre-warning that an alert is on the way. This will happen if your “Prominent Haptics” feature is turned on. You might not be aware of this, so you can check it out. It’s a long and strong vibration that notifies you that there’s an incoming alert. It’ll then be followed by the vibration of the alert itself.
If you find these vibrations too strong for your liking, did you know that there are actually two levels of vibrations that you can choose from? You can opt for the standard option or if it’s too weak for you, you can choose the stronger option. Just open the Settings app on your Apple Watch and scroll down the list. At the bottom, select Sound and Haptics, where you’ll be able to choose the level of vibration for your Apple Watch.
To avoid random vibrations by your Apple Watch due to certain events or features, you can simply update your Settings. After all, some random alerts or notifications might not be that useful to you and the random vibrations may just be a distraction. Just turn off these notifications in your Settings to get everything straightened up.
However, if your problem is the opposite, meaning your Apple Watch isn’t vibrating despite a reset, you might want to have your Taptic Engine checked. It’s a piece of hardware that is responsible for making your Apple Watch vibrate. The same concept also applies if your Apple Watch keeps vibrating randomly despite checking and updating your Settings. If that’s the case, the next best thing to do is to have your device checked by an Apple Genius.
