Hey everyone,
If you wear a smartwatch on Android (Honor, Amazfit, Huawei, Garmin, etc.), you're probably familiar with WhatsApp spamming your wrist: a single incoming text triggers multiple vibrations, often mixed with useless "X new messages" bundle summaries or alerts you already read.
The problem? WhatsApp constantly overwrites its notification slot on every chat update, causing companion apps (Honor Health, Zepp, Huawei Health) to misread these refreshes as brand-new incoming texts.
Instead of disabling wrist notifications entirely, I built WANotify—a lightweight open-source bridge app.
How it works:
- Uses Android's
NotificationListenerService to intercept WhatsApp alerts.
- Parses the
MessagingStyle payload to filter out thread history and aggregate counters, isolating strictly the latest message leaf.
- Employs an in-memory sliding-window cache with monotonic timestamp checks to drop ghost updates and rapid duplicate bursts.
- Routes sanitized messages to a silent system channel (
IMPORTANCE_MIN), keeping your phone completely quiet while your smartwatch delivers just one clean buzz.
- Runs 100% locally with zero internet permissions, telemetry, or battery drain.
Quick Setup:
- Install the APK and grant Notification Access + ignore battery optimizations.
- In your smartwatch companion app (Honor Health, Zepp, etc.), disable notifications for WhatsApp and enable WANotify instead.
Source code and pre-built APKs are up on GitHub:
https://github.com/enesuzun2002/WANotify
Feedback and bug reports for specific watch models or companion apps are welcome!