We’ve got a huge amount of granular control available to us on the Apple Watch. Of course, if you don’t want to fuss with your device, you don’t have to, as the default settings will work for most folks. If, however, you’re a mess-arounder like me, you’ll want to adjust every little option you can. To that end, we’re going to go over how to configure the way that emails function on your Watch.
To get started, open the Apple Watch iPhone app, touch the “My Watch” tab at the bottom, and then tap Mail.
Within that screen, you can set exactly how you’d like emails to behave. If you like consistency, “Mirror my iPhone” is the easiest thing to choose—with that on, your Watch will treat emails the same way as your phone does, and you’ll be shown a summary of what that means.
I find, though, that this isn’t as handy as the “Custom” option. For example, I have an email address that I use mainly for online purchases, so the vast majority of stuff I get there is spam. While I like to monitor that account for the occasional important message, I don’t need my Watch notifying me that I’ve received yet another promotional email from Ticketmaster. Luckily, toggling that “Custom” choice on will let me set up each account individually, so I can turn off Watch notifications for just that one email address by tapping on it.
While you’re in this screen, be sure to look around at all of the other options available. For example, you can configure whether each email account notifies you with sound, with haptic feedback, or both.
Also, if you scroll down within My Watch > Mail once you’ve got “Custom” on, you can change pretty much anything you’d like about your email, such as how many lines of each message are shown in the preview, say, or whether you’d prefer to be asked before deleting something.
See? Sometimes it’s good to be a mess-arounder. We may not get a lot done, but we do know more about device settings than is probably necessary.