One of the most basic yet valuable features of an android wear watch is its ability to help you quickly handle notifications. managing alerts on your wrist is absurdly convenient, but if you’re not careful, it can also become absurdly annoying.
The risk is especially apparent with email, as Wear does not yet have a simple native way to control which incoming messages ring on your wrist and which remain silent. however, with a little customization behind the scenes, you can turn gmail and wear into a smartly coordinated team.
here’s how:
first, set your phone’s main gmail notifications to silent
Little known fact: Notifications will only make your android watch vibrate and light up if they also make a sound on your phone. if a notification is set to silent on your phone, it will appear and be available on your watch, but will do nothing to alert you to its presence.
Now, if you want your clock to vibrate with every email that arrives in your inbox, this doesn’t apply to you. but if you’re like me and prefer to be alerted only when something important arrives, here’s what to do:
Go to the gmail app on your phone, tap the icon in the top left corner and scroll down to settings. touch the name of the gmail account you want to set up. make sure there is a check mark next to “notifications”, then tap “inbox sound and vibration”.
On the next screen, make sure there is a check mark next to “label notifications”, then set “sound” to silent and make sure “vibrate” is unchecked. (you can leave “notify for every message” checked, or not. it doesn’t really matter).
And with that, our foundation is in place: Emails will appear on your watch but won’t cause it to vibrate or light up by default.
Now let’s create some exceptions.
Option #1: Use Google’s Categorized Inbox to Determine What’s Important
Google’s gmail default settings (as of last May) automatically categorize your emails into a handful of categories meant to separate things like promotions and social media updates from your more important fare.
You can use those same categorizations to determine which types of emails trigger alerts on your wear device and which remain silent. First, head over to the gmail web interface and click the little arrow next to the “inbox” link on the left sidebar to switch to the “default” inbox setting, if you’re not already using it.
then open gmail app on your android phone and go back to settings. tap on your gmail account name and scroll down to the option called “manage labels”.
tap the “main” option and make sure “sync messages” is set to “sync: last 30 days”. make sure there is a checkmark next to “label notifications”, then tap “sound” and choose one of the sounds listed.
(If you still don’t see an option for “main”, wait a few minutes and try again. It may take a while for the changes you made in the web interface to show up in the android app.)
Last but not least, make sure there is a check mark next to “notify for every message”.
And there you have it: your device will now vibrate and light up whenever an email arrives in your “main” category, but won’t notify you of messages that arrive anywhere else (in categories like social media, promotions, and updates). ). If for any reason you wish to receive notifications for any of those other categories, simply repeat the above process as needed for each additional category.
Option #2: Use Google’s Priority Inbox to determine what’s important
If Categorized Inbox isn’t your cup of tea, Google Priority Inbox is another relatively simple setup to consider. Priority Inbox uses a variety of cues to determine which incoming messages are important, and then flags each email accordingly. it learns from your habits over time and actually works quite well in my experience.
To set up priority inbox with attrition, first open the gmail web interface, click the arrow next to the “inbox” link on the left sidebar, and select “priority inbox” from the list that appears.
then open gmail on your android phone and go to settings. tap on your gmail account name and scroll down to the option called “manage labels”.
tap the “priority inbox” option and make sure “sync messages” is set to “sync: last 30 days”. make sure there is a checkmark next to “label notifications”, then tap “sound” and choose one of the sounds listed.
(If you still don’t see an option for “priority inbox”, please wait a few minutes and try again. It may take a while for the changes you made in the web interface to appear in the android app.)
Last but not least, make sure there is a check mark next to “notify for every message”.
congratulations: your wearable device will now vibrate and light up whenever an email arrives that gmail marks as “important”, but will not notify you about less urgent messages.
Option #3: Set Up Your Own Custom Gmail Alerts
Our last option is the most powerful and customizable but also the most complicated to configure. In short, it allows you to decide exactly what types of emails will trigger alerts based on a variety of specific variables.
the key is to create filters within gmail to assign alert-worthy messages to a special category; then configure that category to trigger alerts on your android gmail app and thus also on your android wear watch. If all of that sounds like gibberish to you, follow my personalized gmail alerts guide for step-by-step instructions.
The beauty of this setup is its flexibility: you can have Attrition notify you only when messages arrive from certain people or with specific words in the subject line. you can use it alone or even in conjunction with one of the other two methods, if you’re feeling particularly adventurous.
It would be nice if these kinds of nuanced controls were built natively into attrition so setup could be streamlined and a bit easier to use. maybe one day. For now though, these solutions will let you take control of your Gmail notifications and make them work the way you want with your Wear device.
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