While an Apple Watch isn’t an approved medical device, it includes an array of safety features that make it such a powerful smartwatch to have. One of these features is Fall Detection.
Fall Detection is available on Apple Watch SE, Ultra series, and Series 4 and later, and it’s active by default for seniors aged 55 years and above.
The purpose of Fall Detection is to sense a hard fall and sermon emergency services if you need help.
While this featuremostly targets seniors, anyone can use it as long as they’re 18 years or older. After all, accidents can happen to anyone – not just a specific age group.
How Does Apple Watch Fall Detection Works?
Fall Detection uses an accelerometer and gyroscope to detect falls. The accelerometer detects a change in your body’s velocity and divides it by time. The gyroscope uses the Earth’s gravity to determine your orientation.
Let’s put this into perspective, shall we?
Imagine you’re hiking, walking or running and accidentally stumble, fall, and hit the ground hard. Fall Detection turns on immediately, taps your wrist, sounds an alarm, and displays an alert message that says, “It looks like you’ve taken a hard fall.”
You’ll see three options following this message: Emergency SOS, “I’m Ok”, and a dismiss option.
Your Apple Watch won’t trigger an emergency call if you get up and continue walking or running.
But if you fell so hard that you don’t move for a minute, your watch will vibrate and the alarm will go off loudly for 30 seconds. If you still don’t move for another 30 seconds, your Apple Watch will automatically contact emergency services (911 in the US) for help.
As soon as emergency services get an alert that you need help, they’ll reach out to your emergency contacts to let them know you’ve fallen and need help. The message sent to your emergency contacts includes your location shared as latitude and longitude coordinates.
Is Fall Detection on Apple Watch Accurate?
While Fall Detection is a useful safety feature on Apple Watch, it’s not 100% accurate. It still can’t differentiate between a high impact activity and a hard fall.
For example, if you hit your arm hard against a couch, or engage in a high-impact exercise, Fall Detection activates and the 30 seconds countdown starts.
Of course, you can turn this off immediately. However, such a small experiment goes a long way to show that Apple still has some work to do to perfect this feature’s algorithm.
How to Use Fall Detection on Your Apple Watch
Fall Detection requires you have emergency contacts in your Medical ID. And you have to enable the feature on your iPhone to get the most out of it even on your Apple Watch.
So here’s what you need to do:
Add Emergency Contacts to Your Medical ID
Emergency services will use these contacts if your Apple Watch doesn’t detect a response or motion after about 2 minutes form the time you fall.
- Open Health app on your iPhone.
- Select Medical ID.
- Tap Edit then Edit Medical ID.
- Tap “add emergency contact”.
- Choose a contact from your list.
- Select a Relationship.
Repeat this process to add all of your emergency contacts to your Medical ID. But do keep in mind that you can’t add emergency services, such as 911, as your emergency contacts.
Additionally, enable the “Show When Locked” to allow anyone to access and call your emergency contacts for assistance, even if you’ve locked your iPhone.
Enable Fall Detection
Follow the steps below to enable Fall Detection if you’re at least 18 but younger than 55 years:
- Open Watch app on your iPhone.
- Find Emergency SOS under My Watch tab.
- Toggle Fall Detection to green to enable.
- Set Fall Detection to “Always On” or set it to “Only on during Workouts” depending on your preference and age.
Note that Fall Detection is active by default for seniors aged 55 years and above.
Manage Fall Detection Alerts
You don’t have to wait for your Apple Watch to call emergency services on your behalf in the event of a hard fall.
Do the following instead:
- Tap and drag the SOS Emergency Call slider to the right to call 911 immediately.
- Select “I’m Ok” if you don’t want your Apple Watch to place an emergency call.
- Talk to an emergency contact that gets in touch with you and let them know how you feel so they can respond accordingly.
Can I Turn Fall Detection Off on My Apple Watch?
You can turn off Fall Detection if you no longer want to use it on your Apple Watch.
To do this:
- Open Watch app on your iPhone.
- Select Emergency SOS under My Watch tab.
- Toggle off the Fall Detection switch.
