Anyone who owns an Apple Watch is probably familiar with this notification telling you to breathe. But why are you getting this reminder in the first place? Well, that’s what I’ll explain right now. So one of the main features of Apple Watch is its health functionality. Like tracking your workouts, counting your steps, monitoring your heart rate, and even reminding you to stand up every hour. But Apple wanted to take things beyond physical health by adding mental wellness features. And the Breathe app is a result of that effort. It guides users through a number of deep breaths. Since studies suggest those exercises may help relieve symptoms of mental health conditions like general stress, anxiety, depression and PTSD. But Apple knew people likely wouldn’t think about using the Breathe app throughout the day, so they decided to enable notification reminders to help out. And there’s been a lot of speculation over the timing of these notifications. With people thinking they may triggered by a rise in heart rate due to stress, or when their breathing pattern changes. But that isn’t the case.
Apple designed Breathe notifications to appear when a user has been sitting silently for at least five minutes. Since you can typically spend sixty seconds deep breathing in those moments compared to sitting in a meeting or while driving. By default, the number of Breathe reminders you receive per day is set to three. While the number of deep breathes per session is set to seven. And there’s some science behind this too. Apple actually ran a study with users who practice meditation as well as people who have asthma or other breathing problems, and they found that taking seven breaths per minute was the most comfortable for the most people. Now if you’ve found the Breathe notifications to be annoying, you can always disable them in your iPhone’s watch app settings. But just like standing up every hour is beneficial to your physical health, Apple realized that deep breathing throughout the day is beneficial to your mental health. So it’s probably a good idea to take a few deep breathes during those quiet moments, since the health benefits are what prompted Apple to deliver those notifications in the first place.