22 Features You May Have Missed in watchOS 10

[spinedoc77]

OK this is getting worse as it goes on, sigh. With a watch face that has a top middle complication I'm finding when I have an alert, it's almost impossible to click on the top middle widget. In particular I keep my walkie talkie on for my daughter, and that has a 24/7 indicator right above that top middle widget, it's almost impossible to click anywhere in that area and not open up control center via the walkie talkie widget.

PS: Apple How TF do I remove the compass shortcuts from the shortcuts list evoked from the action button on the Ultra?!?!?!? More complexity via less choice...again. My daughter reminded me of this today; after seeing the really cool background I have behind the icons, that moves around and you can push it around with your finger, on my Android device asked how she could get that on her iPhone mini.

 

[manu chao]

Long press on the face to change? That's working for me. Isn't that how it was before?

Previously you just swiped left and right, much like changing between home screens on an iPhone. Imagine having to long-press on the homescreen just to get to the second page.

 

[manu chao]

Yeah, longpress for a second - same as you do to be able to edit a watchface - then swipe left or right and tap to select. I note this is aligned with how you change the phone lockscreen.

I get that's more effort than the prior left/right swipe method, so I get why some may find it frustrating. For me though it was frustrating having to correct accidental watch face changes, which the new method should prevent.

How do you check your battery level of your Watch? Previously I just swiped right to a watch face that had the battery level as a complication and swiped left again to get to my previous watch face.

There aren’t a lot of global interaction modes on a touch screen. Swiping in the four directions are the basic ones. It is a crime that two of them (swiping right or left) now do nothing.

Imagine having to long-press, swipe, and tap to enter control centre. I had 14 apps at my fingertips on three watch faces. I am seriously considering buying a used Apple Watch to “downgrade” to watchOS 9 again.

 

[manu chao]

On WatchOS 9, if I scrolled down the list of apps and selected Workout, next time I pressed the crown button to bring up the list of apps, it went to the last app I selected. Now it starts at the top of the list and I have to scroll back down to Workout to select it again. Or I can choose it from the list of recent apps. Or I can program the button on the Ultra 2 to open Workout. But I’d appreciate it if they’d fix this.

The best way to launch apps was via complications. Even if you didn’t want a lot of them on your main watch face, just put a lot of them on the second face and launching apps was just one swipe plus one tap away. Alas, that doesn’t work anymore in watchOS 10.

 

[manu chao]

In prior watchOS versions you could also change the watch face by simply swiping left or right. This also made it fairly easy to accidentally switch watch faces.

Accidentally swiping up or down also could land you in notifications or control centre. Would that be reason enough to hide them behind long-presses?

 

[deeddawg]

How do you check your battery level of your Watch?

I rarely wish to do so, but I just open Control Center when I do. Used to be swipe up, now it’s click side button. I’m fine either way.

 

[MitzEclipse]

Any idea when we will get the Notes app sync functionality to watchOS? Crazy this has been missing for so long. Need at least some notes on my Apple Watch!

My workaround is to use 1Password for a few important notes but would rather have access to native Notes sync

 

[kandavu]

There was talk about watchOS 10 allowing more than one iPhone to pair with an apple watch. Whatever happened that?

 

[BullHorn]

The removal of the Dock is so painful, and the removal of Crown Double-Tap is even worse, I hate it.

I'm abroad right now and decided to go on a run. I activated a Run Workout as well as Maps navigation towards my 'home'. Each time one of the apps had a notification it would come to the forefront (like the Workout HR zone announcement or Work/Rest Interval changed, or the Map navigation told me to prepare to take a turn), but switching between the two manually was unnecessarily tedious.

Before this dog aweful WatchOS10 update I could just double tap the Crown to switch instantly.

 

[macguy167]

There is still sort of a small dock at the bottom of the widget list. It only supports 3 apps, but it's better than nothing I guess.

One "improvement" I don't really like is the use of the side button for control center. I don't think a dedicated button is really necessary, and it looks weird when control center comes up briefly when activating Apple Pay.

On my AWU2, I set up the "wallet" in the apps list, so when I double tap, up comes the activity app, double tap again there's the wallet! Pay, lower wrist, watch face returns! Hope this helps others (I don't use the right button much except when I don't have a power meter complication and need to see the battery level which is not checked very often since I only charge every two days for about 30 minutes).

 

[reggoboy]

I also have been recording video for years from my watch.

But I don't think there's a way to switch from camera to video without first doing so on the iPhone itself. My guess is that the new watch widget now allows you to do this without touching the iPhone.

Of course, that should have been a feature from day 1.

And also, it means the journalist here, and possibly Apple itself, was sloppy in the reporting.

Not sure if anyone followed up about this, but I'm disappointed in the video support in the new Camera Remote app. You can read about it here:

iOS 17 Camera Remote for Apple Watch is Better but still Disappointing

Hi folks, I can’t seem to find the topic, but I remember reading that the new Camera Remote was going to finally allow recording video WITHOUT having to tap on your iPhone, and I commented that this was a big deal because I used to have to tap the iPhone Camera into Video mode before I could...

talk.tidbits.com

 

[jdb8167]

Not sure if anyone followed up about this, but I'm disappointed in the video support in the new Camera Remote app. You can read about it here:

iOS 17 Camera Remote for Apple Watch is Better but still Disappointing

Hi folks, I can’t seem to find the topic, but I remember reading that the new Camera Remote was going to finally allow recording video WITHOUT having to tap on your iPhone, and I commented that this was a big deal because I used to have to tap the iPhone Camera into Video mode before I could...

talk.tidbits.com

Hold down the button until you see the 00:00:00 time on the watch screen. Release when done. Not sure if there is a way to lock the video on. I think it worked once for me but I couldn’t get it to happen again so maybe I was wrong.

Edit: Tap the button and hold for a second. Turns on video and needs another tap to stop. Hold on for longer and the video recording stops when you release.