An Apple Watch for ADHD is an immensely useful tool for managing many of the difficulties created by ADHD. It creates immediate advantages, such as visual and audio cues during hyperfocus sessions. An Apple Watch for ADHD also has the potential for long-term habit-forming and skill enhancement through its wide array of scheduling, focus timing, and habit-forming apps. I can’t imagine anybody getting more use from the Apple Watch than those of us with ADHD.
Let’s start with some of the immediate benefits provided by the Apple Watch for hyperfocus. Hyperfocus is both an inherent danger, as well as a gift, of ADHD. It describes the tendency of us with ADHD to struggle with changing focus. This tendency is usually related to our inability to change focus effectively from one task to another, based on which task has the most immediate importance. Here’s another article on our site about Hyperfocus.
This challenge with multitasking relates to our high degree of distractibility. However, this tendency can also describe the opposite of distractibility, which is sometimes our inability to turn off focus on a particular task.
When we get locked into a task that we find mentally rewarding, we can sometimes get focused that we lose all track of time. Consequently, we can quickly get so hyperfocused that we miss meetings, phone calls, or anything else that needed our attention. This is where the Apple Watch can prove to be infinitely helpful.
With the Apple Watch for ADHD, we can create visual, auditory, and haptic cues to help us get out of an intense hyperfocus session. There are dozens of apps with the ability to set timers. The key with the Apple Watch and ADHD is the ability for the watch to give us an audible alarm, flashing or visually noticeably notification with the alarm, and haptic feedback for the alarm with vibration.
The best part of the Apple Watch for ADHD is that it’s on our wrist and always near us to provide these cues when needed during hyperfocus. This allows us to benefit from properly applied hyperfocus without the negative drawbacks of missing anything important during hyperfocus. Here are some Apple Watch apps for ADHD that work exceptionally well for hyperfocus sessions:Power Focus – Work Break Timer (free, $2.99 Pro upgrade), Timer+ – multiple timers (free, $4.99 Pro upgrade), and Just Timers (free, $1.99 Pro upgrade).
Another strong benefit of the Apple Watch for ADHD is its ability to keep us from concentrating too long on any one task. Because a lack of concentration and distractibility accompanies ADHD, it’s essential to limit the time we focus on a task. If we don’t limit our focus time, we risk losing focus and losing track of what we are doing—just like reading, then having to reread pages because we lost focus during reading.
Focusing for too long also carries the risk of overloading our short-term working memory, which is heavily impacted by ADHD. It’s critical that we break up long focus sessions into smaller time chunks, followed by frequent breaks.
These breaks give our short-term memory a chance to move data into our long-term memory and refresh for additional concentration. Several Apple Watch apps for ADHD aim to set focus time goals, such as Focus To-Do: Focus Timer&Tasks, (free, $1.99 per month Pro upgrade) and Pomodoro Focus Timer (free).
Power Focus – Work Break Timer (free, $2.99 Pro upgrade) is an especially useful app for monitoring both focus and break times.
A common trait of ADHD is forgetfulness. The Apple Watch also has an advantage here with Task Management apps like Todoist (free, $4 per month Pro). The Todoist task management app is a powerful app for keeping track of scheduled and prioritized tasks. With the accompanying Apple Watch app, the Todoist custom notifications can be set for location and time. At a monthly subscription price of $4, the Todoist app provides, by far, the most utility and benefit for succeeding with ADHD.
The Productive – Habit Tracker app and its accompanying Apple Watch app are also tremendously useful for ADHD by keeping track of habits, such as staying hydrated. This can be especially useful during hyperfocus sessions when we are engaged in a task so deeply that we forget common things like hydration.
One of the more commonly used features of the Apple Watch is its ability to control your music directly from the watch screen. Music can be invaluable in combating ADHD and maintaining focus. An especially useful music streaming service that is designed with focus in mind is Brain.FM. For a monthly subscription price of $6.99, Brain.FM is far cheaper than Apple Music or Spotify. Brain.FM is also scientifically designed for focus, which makes it a great choice for ADHD.
Focus@Will is another insanely useful music streaming service for ADHD focus music. At the current monthly subscription price of $7.49, Focus@Will is a music streaming service entirely dedicated to delivering music that is optimized for focus and productivity. With neuroscientists collaborating with music producers, Focus@Will provides thousands of hours of focus-optimized tracks. A unique and relevant aspect of Focus@Will is their ADHD music channel, which is created exclusively for concentrating with ADHD. Another useful feature is their productivity tracker that is incorporated into the app to provide feedback on music focus sessions. Their monthly subscription cost is also cheaper than Apple Music or Spotify.
There are several other articles in our blog that discuss and compare different music streaming services and their efficacy for ADHD. Here is a review of several streaming music services. Here is a review of Brain.FM.
Another key to Apple Watch’s advantages is the ability to edit and choose what’s shown on the main watch screen. Mobile phones have an inherent drawback because of their ability to give us too much information and distraction. Being able to customize the Apple Watch screen for ADHD allows us to limit what information is shown.
For this, you can choose to edit the watch screen directly in the iPhone Watch app. On the Apple Watch directly, you can edit the screen on the watch by swiping left or right to choose the main screen style, then long pressing on the front screen will allow you to edit what widgets are shown. For immediate focus, such as when using the Just Timers app, the screen can be set to just to show the timer.
Related to customizing the main Apple Watch screen, the available notifications can be highly customized. Any app can have notifications turned off.
Also, the watch’s ability to duplicate the iPhone notifications can be turned off. On the iPhone, you may not want to turn off all notifications. However, you can decide to eliminate those notifications from the Apple Watch and limit the notifications to just the iPhone. This way, those of us with ADHD can customize and explicitly use an Apple Watch for ADHD benefits.
Here is another article on our site that dives deeper into the rationale for limiting phone and watch notifications.
If all of those benefits aren’t enough, there are apps like Drafts that can be infinitely useful in providing an immediate place to record text or audio. Every time the app is opened on the Apple Watch, the app presents the user with a blank slate that can be used to enter text or record audio.
So, anytime you need to instantly store a note, text, or record audio, the Drafts app is on your wrist. This app also syncs with their iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps.
For ADHD, the Apple Watch can become an indispensable tool that is always readily available on your wrist.
Apple Watch for ADHD
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