Apple Watch and Wrist Tattoos Don’t Mix

The new Apple Watch is in all the headlines of late. These news stories are both good and bad. The smartwatch is a brand new category for Apple and for most people this is the first time they have seen a smartwatch. There are plenty of questions and point of confusion doing the rounds and it seems there is a lot for us to learn with the Apple Watch. One problem that has come to our attention is that of wrist tattoos and the new wearable device.

It seems that wrist tattoos and the Apple watch don’t mix. This is not a problem that would have ever crossed our mind and probably not one that Apple would ever have considered either. It seems thought that some people are unable to use the Apple watch because of their tattoos and the setting they choose on the device.

There is a Reddit thread at the moment that is getting an awful lot of attention. It seems that people with heavily tattooed arms are finding that the Apple Watch’s wrist detection system is getting confused by their ink. Seemingly, the way the Apple Watch system works involves infrared and other types of light being reflected back from a user’s skin. The problem with tattooed wrist is that the light being used by the Apple Watch is being absorbed by the ink used in tattoos, and this means that the Apple Watch doesn’t know when if it is on someone’s wrist or not.

Now you might wonder why this is a problem. Well, it means that the watch will keep locking itself because it doesn’t think it is on its owner’s wrist leaving people having to enter their PIN unlock code all the time. It also means that Apple Pay won’t work which is a real nightmare too. There is a workaround for this problem but it means that users have to disable the wrist detection inside the Apple Watch app on their iPhone, but when they do this, it rids the watch of some of its best functionality. It also makes the Apple Watch a non-starter and this is a real shame.

So far we haven’t seen or heard anything from Apple about this issue, but those with tattooed arms are being advised to find some open skin to attach their Apple Watch to if they want to keep the wrist detection turned on and working.

It really is a very strange problem to be reporting on and one that we are sure nobody thought of beforehand. Still, it is a problem and it does make this device useless to a large number of people. We are curious to see how Apple fixes this problem and as soon as we discover a solution, we will be sure to let you know.