Apple Watch Series 4 sales kicked off on Friday, after a week of preorders, and days after a flurry of reviews praised Apple’s new wearable device. Series 4 is a massive upgrade for the Watch, both when it comes to design and new features. And features do include two exciting health tricks unseen on similar products. But you should know that you’ll have to manually turn on one of them if you’re too young.
The two exciting health features are Fall Detection and ECG. It’s pretty obvious what each one can do, but the former will not be turned on by default if you’re not at least 65-years-old — or if you haven’t specified your age inside the Health app.
With Fall Detection enabled, the Watch will be able to detect falls and offer automatic assistance. That means the screen will automatically show you a notification that lets you call emergency services if you need medical assistance.
As a Reddit user discovered, the feature is only turned on automatically if you meet the minimum age requirement. The setting does make sense, as it’s usually older people who experience falls more often than younger adults. But if you’re the kind of person who happens to fall a lot, you might want to turn the feature on manually.
Here’s how you do it, per Apple’s support document:
1. Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, then tap the My Watch tab.
2. Tap Emergency SOS.
3. Turn Fall Detection on or off.
There is a downside to turning the setting on. Apple notes on the help page that “the more physically active you are, the more likely you are to trigger fall detection due to high impact activity that can appear to be a fall.”
