The easiest way to stop your watch from distracting you at the movies.
Theater Mode is a neat little toggle designed to help you tone down your watch in a similar manner to Do Not Disturb mode. The setting launched with watchOS 3.2, meaning even the original Apple Watch, which first hit stores back in 2015, can utilize it. Therefore, if you want to make notifications as subtle as possible, without blocking them entirely, you can simply activate this nifty mode on any Apple Watch you might have.
How Theater Mode works and how to enable it
The big difference between this mode and the total serenity of Do Not Disturb (besides the disabled display) is that Theater Mode will allow you to keep haptics on, meaning you’ll still be able to feel the vibration from a notification.
If you want to turn this feature on, you only need to tap your watch’s side button (the flat oval button) to bring up the Control Center. From there, you can toggle Theater Mode by tapping the icon resembling the theatrical comedy-tragedy masks. Unlike Do Not Disturb, however, there are no conditionals for disabling Theater Mode after a certain duration or event, so you’ll need to toggle the mode manually.
The best times to use Theater Mode
Theater Mode also carries a few extra benefits that make it even more useful. Chiefly, it can reduce battery drain by stopping your watch from waking up at the slightest gesture. You can also choose to suppress certain biometric readings, such as blood oxygen readings, while your watch is in this mode. To toggle this, you can simply head to Settings and click on the reading you want to keep on or off during Theater Mode, if applicable.
