If you own a Galaxy Watch, you may have sometimes noticed a white icon that looks like a watch face, usually at the top center of your smartwatch, indicating that it has lost its Bluetooth connection. This can happen for several reasons, including if your watch is too far from your phone, if your phone’s battery is dead, or if you have turned off Bluetooth on your phone. We found that some Galaxy Watch users reported that the phone was in “Watch Only” mode, but this is not correct. Watch only mode is a separate feature on Galaxy Watches that you need to enable manually.
When you see the watch icon, you won’t be able to access any of the watch’s Bluetooth features, like taking calls or reading text messages from your phone through your watch. However, your watch can continue to store health data remotely, like workouts, steps, heart rate, and sleep data, as long as there is storage space on the device. Once the Bluetooth connection is restored, you can sync this information with the Samsung Health app.
What is Watch Only mode?
If you’re wondering how the aforementioned Watch Only mode differs from offline, putting your Galaxy Watch into Watch Only mode turns your smartwatch into a regular watch and disables all other features. Besides having to be activated manually, there is no icon indicating that Watch Only mode is activated. The only display is a simple non-customizable watch face showing the time.
To enable Watch only mode, open your watch settings and choose Battery & device care, then Battery. From here, you can turn Watch Only mode on and off. This mode extends battery life and prevents your watch from interrupting you during meetings or other times when you don’t want distractions. However, it’s important to remember that enabling Watch Only mode means your watch will not track, record, or save any data. All notifications, app connections, sensors and smart features are completely disabled in this mode.
