Prevent Apple Watch face from showing when Do Not Disturb on

In watchOS 3.2, Apple added Theater Mode, accessed by swiping up from the Watch Face and tapping the bottom-left icon.

Theater Mode

Theater Mode silences the WATCH and prevents the screen from lighting up on wrist-raise or when receiving notifications. Taptic feedback will still be triggered.

You can combine Theater Mode and Do Not Disturb to silence Taptic feedback, as well. Alarms will still ring as normal.


In WatchOS 7 Apple introduced the Sleep mode natively: https://support.apple.com/fi-fi/guide/watch/apd830528336/watchos .

The sleep mode differs from Theater by a few ways:

  • Tapping does wake the screen now
  • Opt-in sleep tracking
  • Digital and more dimmed clock