Fall detection is an important feature of Apple Watch that has saved many lives. It detects when you have a serious fall and automatically contacts emergency services if you remain motionless for a minute after your fall. Fall detection isn’t enabled by default, though, so we’ll show you how to make the most of this feature.
Does my Apple Watch support fall detection?
Fall detection is available on Apple Watch Series 4 or newer Apple Watch models. These include Apple Watch Series 5, Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Series 6.
How to set up fall detection on Apple Watch
If you have one of the above Apple Watch models, let’s start setting up fall detection.
- Go to the Watch app on your iPhone.
- Go to my watch tab.
- tap SOS.
- enable Fall detection.
While this will enable fall detection, you’ll need to set up a Medical ID to ensure your Apple Watch can contact emergency services. You can also add people close to you as emergency contacts here, who will receive a text message stating that you have called emergency services and your location at the time of the call. Please follow the steps below.
- On your iPhone, go to Settings > Health > Medical ID.
- Click now Create a medical ID.
- tap Add emergency contact and select the contact you want to ping in case of emergency.
Once you’ve done this, there’s just one more step to make sure your Apple Watch can contact emergency services. Please follow the steps below.
- On your Apple Watch, go to Settings > Password.
- Now you need to enable Wrist detection. If it is already enabled, no changes are required.
These steps will enable fall detection on your Apple Watch.
What happens when fall detection is triggered
After a serious fall, fall detection is triggered on Apple Watch. If there is no movement for one minute after the fall, the watch will start a 30-second countdown. The Apple Watch will also alert you that it has detected a fall, which you can choose to do. During these 30 seconds, the watch taps your wrist and sounds an alarm, which increases in volume. The purpose of the vibration is to ensure that you can’t react, while the alarm attempts to let people near you know that you need help.
When the countdown ends, Apple Watch will contact emergency services and alert your emergency contacts.
Once the call is connected, the watch will play an audio message informing emergency services of your fall and the coordinates of your location.
Where to check when fall detection is triggered
Apple’s Health app logs all hard falls, so if you want to check when fall detection is activated, you can go to health apps on your iPhone and go to health data tab. Now you can click result Review your fall history.
For more tutorials, visit our how-to section.
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