[NewsPoster]

Your Apple Watch keeps telling you about different notifications, but you're deep in conversation, you're driving, or you're just someone with vast self-control. Whatever the reason, you are going to start piling up notifications on your Watch, and they won't seem to be there when you finally get to look. Here's where they are and how to see them -- because you're not checking them when you're driving, are you?

Just do this
Lift up your wrist and when your Apple Watch switches on, swipe down –– and then just keep swiping.

Your watch shows you the last notification you had and you can then use the Digital Crown to scroll through all your recent ones. You don't have to use the Crown, mind: like most or all places where you can rotate that, you can also swipe to scroll the list. When you see one you want to read properly -- like the email in this example screen shot -- tap on it, read away, and at the bottom you'll have controls to dismiss the notification.

In theory, this is the same as the notification center on your iPhone, but who uses that? Whereas your Watch can get so many notifications that it'll become as familiar as swiping up for Glances.

Mind you...

So far in our use we've found this handy but we're still a little wary: for some reason, the same feature in iPhone notification center is patchy: it seems to show us only ancient notifications like Facebook statuses from a week ago, To Do tasks from January, or news headlines of a little local difficulty in Vietnam.

Consequently, your mileage and ours may vary over time -- but even as we were immediately used to the idea of swiping up to see Glances, and swiping left and right to move between different screens, we had to hunt for how to get the pesky notifications we were missing.

PS. Since we first published this article, a reader kindly points out his own handy tip: a force-touch on the Watch while in your notifications will clear them all.

-- William Gallagher (@WGallagher)

[pottymouth]

...and if your notifications are all garbage, just force touch to clear them all.

[Inkling]

Quite a few of those who feel they need to monitor these notifications from moment to moment don't need an Apple Watch or any other smartwatch. They need counseling to ease their obsessions and better management skills. As President Eisenhower observed, if you are doing your job right, what's urgent is rarely important and what's important is rarely urgent.

[sunman42]

"In theory this is the same as the notification center on your iPhone but who uses that?"

*Raises hand* As Inkling points out, unless you're commanding the Allied Forces in Europe when they;re surprised in the Battle of the Bulge... oh, wait. But for the rest of us, ignoring the phone for minutes at a time is the key to mental and emotional health. So yes, I use the notifications.... and ignore plenty of them.

[Charles Martin]

I also use notifications for work chat, but you can bet if I ever get an Apple Watch it will be a far, far more selective set of notifications that make it on to that device.

[pottymouth]

Thankfully, it is extremely easy to do that. The Apple Watch app has a list of all the apps on your phone with an option to mirror their alerts to your phone or not.

[just a poster]

blah blah blah sent you an email
RSS blah blah blah bill passed. trillions in spending. Ted Cruz freaks out. Obama says creates 20 jobs.
to-do: goto grocery store. (4 months overdue.) SWIPE to dismiss.

Sounds like being under house arrest with an ankle bracelet.