Regain control of your Apple Watch’s watch face.
Are you tired of glancing down at yourصند
Apple Watch
and seeing something
other
Than your watch face? This is a frequent issue nowadays.
The primary reason for this is Live Activities. Introduced with watchOS 9 during the fall season in 2024, this feature displays updates such as live sports scores or the status of your food delivery orders.
Live Activities also support media playback controls. This means that when you’re listening to music, a podcast, or watching a video on your iPhone, you’ll be able to view the album art or control playback directly from your Apple Watch rather than seeing the watch face.
You could potentially view your Smart Stack as well. It consists of a group of widgets displayed when you scroll upward on your Apple Watch (or rotate the Digital Crown) starting from the watch face. However, occasionally, the Smart Stack—which includes a Live Activity widget—will automatically appear, replacing your watch face with itself.
If these issues bother you, there’s positive news. You have the option to tweak some settings so as to stop Live Activities or your Smart Stack from automatically launching. That means, whenever you glance at your Apple Watch, you will see only your watch face.
Just like how you intended.
Disable all Live Activities
You can turn off every Live Activity at once, including sports updates, food delivery details, and media control buttons.
- Open the Settings app on your Apple Watch.
- Select Smart Stack.
- Select Live Activities.
- Toggle off the first option, “Allow Live Activities.”
This will stop Live Activities from automatically starting on your Apple Watch. While this resolves the issue, it could be considered excessive for many users. Nonetheless, having Live Activities visible on your Apple Watch can indeed be helpful at times, correct?
Prevent media apps from auto-launching
If it’s just media controls Apple Watch that you don’t want to see — remember, you’ll still be able to see them on your iPhone — you can isolate and disable just those, instead.
- Open the Settings app on your Apple Watch.
- Select Smart Stack.
- Select Live Activities.
- Scroll down and select Media Apps.
- For the Auto-Launch option, choose Off.
If you toggle off the “Allow Live Activities” choice at the top, your media playback controls will not appear in your Smart Stack (which you can access by swiping up from your Apple Watch’s watch face).
In the Auto-Launch section, if you select Smart Stack, you’ll be able to access media controls through Smart Stack but they won’t take over your watch face anymore.
If you select App, which is on by default, nothing will change, and the media controls will still occasionally take over your Apple Watch’s watch face.
