Disabling all fitness and health related stuff

[Sami13496]

Never owned an AW but considering one. Looking at AW SE. The Apple Watch is designed with a strong emphasis on fitness and health features - in which I’m not interested at all. I would use AW for notifications and communication and that sort of stuff. Is it possible (and how easy?) to disable all fitness and health related stuff, deny sensors to measure me, remove related apps, etc? Or is that stuff too heavily integrated in AW?

 

[throAU]

Never owned an AW but considering one. Looking at AW SE. The Apple Watch is designed with a strong emphasis on fitness and health features - in which I’m not interested at all. I would use AW for notifications and communication and that sort of stuff. Is it possible (and how easy?) to disable all fitness and health related stuff, deny sensors to measure me, remove related apps, etc? Or is that stuff too heavily integrated in AW?

Haven't tried but you can not consent to the data collection (from memory) which would make it all moot.

You can turn off notifications for activity, etc. which would mean it doesn't bug you to stand/go exercise, etc.

It will still use the sensors for crash detection most likely however but won't report it back.


That said, as someone who wasn't interested specifically in the health stuff before owning one, I've left it turned on and it has been quite interesting to learn things about my body vs. what I eat/drink and level of activity.

But if you're against the data collection, I get it - see above.

 

[3Rock]

For me, I deleted the Health apps (app view not Grid view) that I was not interested in by just swiping it from right to left in the app itself to remove it from my watch. You can always reinstall them later.

 

[arc of the universe]

Never owned an AW but considering one. Looking at AW SE. The Apple Watch is designed with a strong emphasis on fitness and health features - in which I’m not interested at all. I would use AW for notifications and communication and that sort of stuff. Is it possible (and how easy?) to disable all fitness and health related stuff, deny sensors to measure me, remove related apps, etc? Or is that stuff too heavily integrated in AW?

its quite easy to do
using the Watch app on iPhone:
go to Privacy tab.
There you can turn off a lot (most?) Health and Fitness tracking. All of the following:
Heart Rate
Blood Oxygen (if you have a model that has that feature)
Wrist Temperature (if you have a model that has that feature)
Respiratory Rate
Time in Daylight
Environmental Sound Measurements
Headphone Audio Measurements
Fitness Tracking

In same app, go to Sleep section and
click "Dont use this Watch for Sleep"

there might be more, but the above are a good start.

 

[Howard2k]

There's no gatekeeper either. Apple doesn't make you look at that stuff ("You can't see the time because you didn't check your fitness information"). You can ignore the stuff you don't need too.