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Wearing Kinetic Watch on Shabbos

Are you allowed to wear a kinetic watch on Shabbos and Yom Tov.
A Kinetic watch is a watch that needs no batteries or winding it stays running by the movement of your hand.

Answer:

It is permitted to wear this type of watch on Shabbos and Yom Tov.

Best wishes.

Sources:

Many poskim forbid actually winding a watch on Shabbos, because is might be considered “fixing a vessel,” or, according to the Chazon Ish, an act of “building.”

In the case of a ticking watch that is already ticking neither of these reasons apply, and the Da’as Torah 338:3 writes that the custom is to be lenient to wind an already ticking watch. Moreover, there is room to argue that even for a stopped watch there is no prohibition of winding the watch, because a stopped watch is not “broken.”

However, the Mishnah Berurah (338:15) is stringent even regarding winding a ticking watch, and this is the accepted custom (see Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchasah 28:19), unless there is an urgent need.

Yet, based on the above there is surely no problem in wearing a “self-winding” watch while it is ticking, since no active action is being done. See also Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchasah (28:28) and sources cited in the footnote.

The same idea will apply to a “kinetic watch,” which is based on a quartz system normally operated by battery. Instead of a battery, movement generates the small amount of electricity that the watch needs, and the watch stores the energy for anywhere from days to months.

Since this is also a mechanical movement, without creating new circuits, it does not appear that this will be included in the universally assumed prohibitions of electricity, so that this will have the same status as a self-winding watch.

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