Some people with tattoos are reportedly having trouble with sensors in the Apple Watch, as noted in a recent Reddit thread. Apple had previously noted that the watch’s wrist sensors — which rely on green LED and infrared lights being reflected into light-sensitive photodiodes — may not work properly for everyone, and it seems that large patches of dark ink over the area of skin where the watch makes contact with a user’s wrist is causing problems.
One commenter said putting the watch on over his black tattoo caused it to lock every time the screen went dark, prompting him for his password and not delivering notifications. When the user held the watch over a patch of non-tattooed skin on his hand, the watch stayed unlocked and functioned as expected.
Disabling wrist detection allowed messages to be delivered to the watch instead of the user’s iPhone, but left him unable to use Apple Pay from the watch. The user informed an Applecare specialist of the issue, which was referred to Apple engineers.
