What Is Theater Mode On Your Apple Watch And When Should You Use It?

Apple Watches do a lot more than tell the time, granting their wearers many of the iPhone’s perks in addition to a suite of biometric data. However, they also possess an assortment of extra traits with more niche, but valuable, use-cases. One of these underrated Apple Watch features is Theater Mode, which is perfect for when you need your watch to quieten down.

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.

Activating Theater Mode will dim the Apple Watch’s bright lights and hush it down; it will turn off the display, silence the device and disable visual notifications. In addition, it will also keep the display from waking whenever you raise your wrist, meaning you’ll need to tap the screen or press either of the Apple Watch’s buttons to turn the display back on. 

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.

Obviously, this mode is great for venues where being quiet and considerate is key, whether watching a play or a movie on the big screen. It’s also a nice feature for when you’re attending meetings or other social events that demand your full attention. In either case, the mode will block any distractions that might irritate anyone in your surroundings, while subtly keeping you in the loop.

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.