Apple Watch Mindfulness is an incredibly useful app that helps you boost your mental health, improve your well-being, and build emotional awareness through mindful sessions.
Now you can use Breathe, Reflect, and State of Mind features to relax, recall your life’s best moments, invite a positive mental state, and make yourself feel a whole lot better.
What is the Mindfulness App on Apple Watch?
Mindfulness on Apple watch is one of the meditation apps you can use to wind down and relive some stress.
Introduced in watchOS 8, Apple Watch Mindfulness features three functional apps under its umbrella: Breathe, Reflect, and State of Mind.
- Breathe: Breathe tells you when to breathe in, hold your breath, and breathe out. This session lasts for 60 seconds by default, but you can adjust the time by up to 5 minutes.
- Reflect: Reflect uses soothing visuals and prompts to put you in a positive mental state. It invites you to think about problems you’ve solved and the great moments you’ve had in your life.
- State of Mind: State of Mind lets you log your current mood, see changes in your emotions, and determine if you’re at the risk of anxiety and depression.
How to Use Apple Watch Breathe App
First, find a still and comfortable space free of interruption because Breathe will end your session if it detects movements or disturbances.
Start a Breathe Session
To start a breathe session:
- Open Mindfulness app.
- Tap Breathe.
- Select Start when you’re ready to begin a breathe exercise.
Breathe will guide you through a series of breathing exercises.Follow the movements of the round animation, making sure you inhale as it expands and exhale as it shrinks.
Once the workout is complete, the Mindfulness app displays a summary of the duration of your breath and your current heart rate.
The more you participate in the workout, the more you improve your breathing over time.
Change a Breathe Session’s Duration
To adjust the session of a breathe session:
- Tap the three dots next to the Breathe option
- Select Duration.
- Choose a duration between 1 and 5 minutes.
- Go back to the previous screen.
- Breathe for the period selected.
How to Use Apple Watch Reflect App
Reflect uses different prompts to give you something to think about. A soothing visual follows each prompt and invites you to breathe calmly as you reflect.
To use this app:
- Open Mindfulness.
- Tap reflect.
- Read the prompt on the screen for what to reflect on.
- Tap Begin to start your reflection.
Each reflection session lasts a minute by default. Tap the three dots icon to change the duration if you would like to reflect for more than a minute. The maximum time you can allocate is five minutes.
An animation will play on your Apple Watch throughout the reflection period and then it will stop after the allocated time.
Once you complete a reflection, which lasts between one and five minutes depending on your duration sessions, you’ll see stats for your heart rate, total mindful minutes, and time spent.
How to Use Apple Watch State of Mind App
Apple added State of Mind to Mindfulness app in watchOS 10 update. It lets you log your current state of mind or mood for an entire day to help you determine a part of your well-being.
To use State of Mind:
- Open Mindfulness on your Apple Watch.
- Tap State of Mind.
- Choose how to log your mood (how you’re feeling now or how you’ve felt during the day).
- Rotate the Digital Crown to choose your state of mind and tap the tick icon to log.
- State what’s affecting your mood and, again, tap the tick option to log.
Neutral is the current state of mind by default. Other options are Neutral, Very Unpleasant, Unpleasant, Slightly Unpleasant, Neutral, Slightly Pleasant, Pleasant, or Very Pleasant.
You can log one state of mind or select multiple options depending on how you feel. Additionally, you have the option to multiple things that are affecting your mood.
How to Customize Mindfulness App on Your Apple Watch
Apple allows you to customize Mindfulness notifications, breathing rate, and the intensity of haptic feedback via the Watch app.
- Open Watch app on your iPhone.
- Tap Mindfulness under My Watch tab.
- Modify Notifications, Breathe Rate, and Haptics to your preference.
Notifications
The Watch app gives you the option to customize notifications for Mindfulness. You can enable notifications to show on your Apple Watch, send to Notification Center, or turn alerts off entirely.
Allowing notifications gives you additional options for mindfulness reminder, weekly summary, and mute for today.
- Mindfulness Reminder: Enable mindfulness reminder at the start and end of your day or set a custom schedule for personalized alerts.
- Weekly Summary: Enable weekly summary to see a recap of your previous 7 days mindfulness sessions.
- Mute for Today: Turn this option on if you don’t want to get mindfulness reminders for a specific day.
You won’t get any alert if you turn notifications off. And that means you’ll have to open the Mindfulness app on your Apple Watch to start a session manually.
Breathe Rate
The default breathe rate in the Mindfulness app is 7 breaths per minute.
However, the Watch app allows you to adjust it to as low as 4 breaths per minute or as high as 10 breaths per minute. The more breaths you choose, the faster your breathing rate will be.
Haptics
Apple Watch haptics, or simply a sense of touch in the form of vibration, forms an important part of the Mindfulness app. In practice, the vibration guides you to inhale and exhale during a breathing session, but it’s not necessarily a must-have.
Haptics is Prominent by default for Mindfulness app, with the option to adjust it to minimum or none at all depending on your preference.
Is Mindfulness App Missing on Your Apple Watch?
If the Mindfulness app is missing on your Apple Watch, it’s because you might have deleted it accidentally or it may not have installed automatically when you set up the smartwatch for the first time.
All you have to do is to reinstall the app via the Watch app on your iPhone or directly from the App Store on Apple Watch.
