Manage Fall Detection on Apple Watch

With Fall Detection enabled, if Apple Watch detects a hard fall, it can help connect you to emergency services and send a message to your emergency contacts. If Apple Watch detects a hard fall and that you have been immobile for about a minute, it will tap your wrist, sound an alarm, and then attempt to call emergency services.

To call emergency services, your Apple Watch or nearby iPhone needs a cellular connection, or needs to have Wi-Fi calling turned on and Wi-Fi coverage available.

If cellular and Wi-Fi coverage are not available, and your iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Pro or later is near your Apple Watch, Fall Detection will use your iPhone to send the notification using Emergency SOS via satellite, where Emergency SOS via satellite is available. See the Apple Support article Use Emergency SOS via satellite on your iPhone.

If the birthdate you enter when setting up your Apple Watch (or adding it to the Health app on iPhone) indicates that you’re 55 or older, Fall Detection is turned on automatically. If you’re between age 18 and 55, you can turn on Fall Detection manually by doing the following:

Open the Settings app on your Apple Watch.
Go to SOS > Fall Detection, then turn on Fall Detection.
You can also open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, tap My Watch, tap Emergency SOS, then turn on Fall Detection.
Note: If you turn off wrist detection, Apple Watch won’t automatically attempt to call emergency services even after it has detected a hard impact fall.
Choose “Always on” to have Fall Detection on at all times, or “Only on during workouts” to have Fall Detection on only when you’ve started a workout.
If you’re between age 18 and 55, and setting up a new Apple Watch with watchOS 8.1 or later, Fall Detection only during workouts is turned on automatically. If you upgrade your existing Apple Watch from an earlier version of watchOS, you must manually turn on the “Only on during workouts” feature.

For more information, see the Apple Support article Use Fall Detection with Apple Watch.

Note: Apple Watch cannot detect all falls. The more physically active you are, the more likely you are to trigger Fall Detection due to high-impact activity that can appear to be a fall.

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Apple Watch User Guide

Manage Fall Detection on Apple Watch