Here, you will find the list of all possible icons that might appear in your Apple Watch and their meaning.
Apple Watch Icons and their meaning
Those icons may either appear on the top bar or at the control center. Wherever it appears, the meaning is all the same. All the icons appearing on all Apple Watches till Apple watchOS 6 are updated in this article. More icons will be added as soon as they are released.
1. Red Dot Icon
The red dot icon indicates there are unread notifications on your Apple Watch. You could find all the unread notifications in your Apple Watch by swiping from the top to open Notification Center.
2. Charging Icon
The green thunder icon indicates that your Apple Watch is currently being charged.
3. Battery Low Warning
The red thunder icon indicates that your Apple Watch is running on a low battery. You should consider plugging in the Apple Watch for Charging.
4. Lock Icon
This padlock icon indicates that the Apple Watch is currently in a locked state. You could enter the passcode and unlock your Apple Watch.
5. Water Lock Icon
The green water drop icon indicates that Water Lock is on. Basically, when the water lock is turned on, Apple Watch won’t respond to taps on the screen. You can unlock the water lock by turning the Digital Crown. This feature is available for Apple Watch Series 2 and above.
6. DND – Do Not Disturb Icon
If this half-moon icon appears on your Apple Watch then it means DND is turned on. All the sound will be muted and the screen won’t light up when calls, SMS or notification arrives. But Alarms will ring even if the DND mode is activated
7. Theater Icon
The dual-mask icon appears when the Theater mode is turned on. This means Apple Watch is silenced and won’t light up unless you raise your wrist. This will be useful for everyone when they are in the Theater.
8. Workout Icon
An icon of a man running will appear on your Apple Watch if a workout is in progress. You can turn it off by ending the workout and the icon would disappear.
9. Lost Cellular Connection Icon
The red cross icon indicates that the Cellular version of Apple Watch has lost connection to the cellular network. This will be only seen in the LTE models of Apple Watch.
10. Lost Paired Connection Icon
An icon in which a one-way cross mark appears on top of a phone indicates that Apple Watch has lost the connection to the paired device. Generally, this icon appears on an Apple Watch when the paired iPhone is too long or not within the range. The icon will also appear if the Airplane mode is turned on in your iPhone as well.
11. Paired Device Connected Icon
This green iPhone icon appears on your Apple Watch when the paired iPhone is connected and is within the range.
12. Location Services Icon
This paper plane icon in the Location Sharing icon. Location Sharing icon appears on Apple Watch while the Location sharing services are used.
13. WiFi Icon
This WiFi icon appears while your Apple Watch is connected to a WiFi Network.
14. Wireless Activity Icon
A loading like symbol in Apple Watch is known as Wireless Activity icon. This icon appears when a wireless activity is in progress or an active process happening.
15. Audio Recording Icon
This red microphone icon appears when Audio is being recorded in the background.
16. Connected to Cellular Network Icon
An icon with a series of 4 icons arranged in a horizontal manner indicates that the watch is connected to a Cellular network. The higher the number of dots the higher is the signal strength and vice versa.
17. Audio Playing Icon
This red icon appears on your watch when an Audio is being played. You can tap on the icon to open the ‘Now Playing’.
18. Phone Call Progress Icon
This icon indicates that a phone call is in progress. Tapping on the icon will open the Phone app in your Apple Watch.
19. Maps Icon
The map icon indicates that Maps is providing directions.
20. Walkie Talkie Icon
Walkie Talkie icon appears when you have enabled Walkie-Talkie mode on your Apple Watch. Your contacts will be able to contact you via Walkie-Talkie.
Why you should know Apple Watch Status Icons?
As Apple Watch is having a relatively smaller screen it is hard to accommodate more pieces of information. If you were about to write DND instead of the DND icon or write Water lock instead of then icon then more space in the screen will be used for that and the user experience won’t be that great. To rectify these problems, Appl use status icons to indicate different things we saw earlier like DND, Wifi, Cellular, Theater mode, etc. The watch face will look minimal and less-cluttered with this approach. Now, if you don’t know the exact meaning of these icons then you may struggle to find the information when needed. Make sure that you go through the list at least once so it would be useful for you in the long run for sure. These are all the icons that you will find on any Apple watch until WatchOS 6. If any new icon appears on newer versions of Apple Watch like WatchOS 7, the updated list will be published here itself. These icons will let you know more about your Apple Watch and makes your usage even better.
