Basically, if you’re at an intimate gathering with friends, your Apple Watch will be able to detect this and not ring as loudly when somebody calls you or read out loud a message you’ve received. It essentially aims to prevent a social faux pas.
On the flip side, if you’re Apple Watch detects that you’re in a loud environment, turning this setting on will further increase the sound of these notifications so that you can hear them even better.
When the Automatically Adjust Volume setting is turned on, you have the option to further make these notifications louder or quieter. Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol
If you’re somebody who is worried that this new setting will actually make Apple Watch notifications even more intrusive … don’t worry, you actually have some control over that.
Once the Automatically Adjust Volume setting is toggled on, you can further tweak how it’s implemented. Specifically, you can set the volume level of these notifications to be “Quieter” or “Louder,” depending on which you prefer.
If you leave the Automatically Adjust Volume setting off, you can select the exact volume level of these notifications via the volume slider.
Of course, if you have your Apple Watch permanently in silent mode — which many do — this new setting will not override it and you won’t hear any notifications.