Apple watchOS platform does not have as many customization options as other smart watches, such as those built on Google Wear the operating system, do. But there are many ways to do yourself Apple Watch yours, beyond choice the color, size and strap of the watch. Here are the main features to know and how to use them.
Watch the iPhone appHone gives you some customization options to get you started. Touch View application and you can choose between a grid and a list for your applications (displayed when you tap the digital crown); with a grid, you can touch and Arrangement to position all your applications exactly the way you want.
Then there’s the dock, which you pull by pressing the side button on the Apple Watch. This shows the latest applications or up to 10 favorite applications. Tell you what watch which apps to display, tap Doc in the Watch app for iOS, then choose Recently or Favorite (If you choose the latter, you can select both the applications you want to see and the order in which they appear).
Watch the faces
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Apple has not yet opened the doors to a community of third-party watch face developers, but there are a growing number of Apple-approved faces to choose from (for the Apple Watch Series 4 and later, at least). To switch to a new clock face from the real clock, swipe left or right on the current face to see the options.
If you’ve just set up your Apple Watch, you won’t actually have many options. You can touch New, and Apple will present a selection of faces for your review – swipe up or down on the screen to scroll through them. When you find something you like, tap the dial of a watch to set it (it will also be added to the quick selection list that appears when you drag on the current face of the watch).
It may be easier for you to set the clock faces on your phone. If you open the Watch app, you can tap Face gallery to see all available options. Here you will see not only a choice of faces, but several variants of those faces. When you select one, you will be able to choose the colors it uses (if available) and the complications you will see (again, if the watch face supports them).
Touch Add on a watch face and add to My girls box on My watch tab – tap Edit | × to change the faces that appear in this list. This is the same list you’ll see if you swipe across the clock to see more options“It’s a good idea to have the faces you use most often stored here for easy access.” If you touch any of these selected faces in the app on your phone, you’ll get to the personalization screen, where you can also choose to Set as the current clock or Remove the face of the watch.
Once you have a few watch faces in My girls gallery, you can swipe the clock screen to move between them. You need to press and hold if you want to share a watch layout that you are particularly interested in, because there you will find the share button in the lower left corner.
Watch for complications
Some watch faces have complications, which they are small shortcuts that lead to applications or functions or panels showing real-time information. Again, you can change these complications on your watch or on your phone. To do this on your portable device, tap and hold the clock face, then choose Edit | ×. You will first see the color options and then swipe left to see the options for complications.
Click on any of the available complications to change it to something else, then scroll using the digital crown to make the selection. Your choice will depend on what type of complication it is and what applications you have installed – choose and then press the digital crown twice to return to the clock face display.
As with the watch faces, this is something that is probably easier to set up from the Watch app on the iPhone. You can press on any face My girls or on Face gallery to get to the complications, which are then simple to unroll. Some clock faces will have more complications than others, and although you won’t be able to rearrange them on the screen, you can turn off some if you want.
If you feel that you need more complications to play, look for iPhone applications that also have decent Apple Watch applications and complications included. You can get musical complications with Spotify, weather complications with Carrot weather, write down the complications with Bear, and travel complications with Citymapper, e.g. Some complications displays information, while others allow interaction.
You can create your own complications, to some extent, using the same tools that developers use. The best option I’ve found so far is Watchmaker, which allows you to create complications that cover time, time and date, astronomy and much more and which also has options for changing complications depending on the time.
Other changes
There are several other ways you can customize the look of what you see on your Apple Watch. If you choose Display and brightness from inside the Watch app on iPhone, for example, you can adjust the screen brightness, rotate Always on the feature is turned on or off (if available), resize the text on the Apple Watch screen, and make the text bold if you want. You can also make these changes in the Clock Settings application.
One way to completely customize your Apple Watch is to set your own photo like the face of your watch. If you open the Photos app on your watch, then select an image and tap the small clock icon in the lower left corner, you can apply the image as a background – either as a simple image or in a kaleidoscope effect.
This is basically the idea behind it Do also featuring custom templates created by others – not third parties –party watch faces, but different environments and combinations of complications that people want to show. If a selected clock face uses a complication from an application that you did not install, you will be prompted to install it.
It doesn’t take much effort to create special wallpapers for the Apple Watch in your favorite image editor of your choice. All you have to do is search for the Apple Watch screen resolution and leave room for the digital dial of the watch that Apple is throwing over it (if you choose a kaleidoscope effect, you get analog hands, but there is no specific choice).
Finally, it is worth mentioning Apple Shortcut application. If the app is running on the smartwatch, then you can launch compatible actions right from the wrist and even set them as complications on the faces of the watch. It’s another way to create custom complications – in this case set to launch shortcuts that you find useful.