Understanding Reactivity Monitor and Prolonged Stress vibration availability – NOWATCH

In this article, you'll learn why your Reactivity Monitor doesn’t appear right away when you first start using the app, and why you aren't receiving any Prolonged Stress vibrations yet.

Reactivity Monitor
Prolonged Stress vibrations
- What are Prolonged Stress vibrations
- Why Prolonged Stress vibrations stay disabled at first

Reactivity Monitor

What the Reactivity Monitor shows

The Reactivity Monitor chart shows how your body responds to stress and physical activity by analyzing heart rate and movement. It reflects both mental stress (e.g., nerves before a presentation) and physical stress (e.g., illness).

When insights become available

These insights won’t appear in the Now or Timeline screens immediately. The chart becomes available within about 5 days, as long as you record at least 6 hours of data per day. Calibration will continue to improve over the next 60 days.

Why it takes time

We need enough baseline data to understand your typical patterns of stress, recovery, movement, and heart rate. Once this baseline is established, the app can accurately detect when you're more or less reactive throughout the day.

Prolonged Stress vibrations

What are Prolonged Stress vibrations

Prolonged Stress vibrations are gentle alerts that the watch sends when you’ve been experiencing sustained stress for a set amount of time. They’re designed to help you notice stress in the moment so you can pause, reconnect with your body, and regulate.

You can enable these vibrations in the app and customize how long stress must last before they activate. Once that threshold is reached, you’ll feel the vibration through the watch.

Why Prolonged Stress vibrations stay disabled at first

Prolonged Stress vibrations can only be enabled once your Reactivity Monitor is active and has collected enough baseline data. Until then, the vibrations remain disabled.

This is because the Reactivity Monitor needs several days of your heart rate and movement patterns to understand what is “normal” for you. Without this baseline, the system can’t reliably detect when you’re experiencing prolonged stress — and sending vibrations without accurate data could lead to false alerts or misleading feedback.

Once your baseline is established and the Reactivity Monitor is fully active, the vibrations will become available and work as intended.