Apple Releases watchOS 10 With Widget-Focused Interface, New Watch Faces and More

Losing the ability to swipe to change the watch face quickly doesn’t bother me that much because I never changed mine, even though I have a few set up.

Losing the dock is annoying, as I used that to quickly open the workout app and to check a timer that was running.

I don’t really understand the point of the widgets on the watch. Have we had widgets as part of watchOS before? I doubt I’ll use the swipe up/turn the crown actions to access & use them.
 
alexhardaker said:
Losing the ability to swipe to change the watch face quickly doesn’t bother me that much because I never changed mine, even though I have a few set up.

Losing the dock is annoying, as I used that to quickly open the workout app and to check a timer that was running.

I don’t really understand the point of the widgets on the watch. Have we had widgets as part of watchOS before? I doubt I’ll use the swipe up/turn the crown actions to access & use them.
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I’ve never worked out the dock so I probably won’t miss it
its odd that a few things have changed for no apparent reason
re workout stuff, I had already set up a couple of versions of a screen that included the various relevant features
the new cycling content might be useful but I already have MapMyRide which does nearly everything I need, plus I have a computer on the bike that shows cadence and other things that I don’t really need
 
sjsharksfan12 said:
People were confused by Watch OS 10? How. It seems pretty easy to me. It also feels a lot more convenient for me too. I always forgot that you had to swipe up for the Control Center so I barely used it. Now I can press the side button and there it is. As for swiping up, the widgets seem a lot more easier to use now, especially getting to podcasts and music. I'm very impressed with the new update so far.
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It COMPLETELY messes up how I use my watch. I have a clean face with no complications most of the time, and then swipe to a face with whichever complications I want to use. Or, to have a quick glance at my fitness data. Now I have to use widgets, which is slower and I don’t have control over the order of the widgets, so muscle memory is out of the question.

Folks saying “how hard is it to long press instead” have absolutely no clue what they are talking about, and don’t understand how I (and clearly many others) use my watch. I hate it!

Also, the interface on my watch is littered with bugs! Had to restart watch to see my notifications. And if I long press to select a different face, every other time the graphics is messes up. What a s***show.

I am usually a staunch Apple defender, but this might make me reconsider being an Apple Watch user.
 
I know this is not a popular opinion, but I am excited for the long press requirement for changing watch faces. I only use one face and hate it when it accidentally changes faces on me. This was something I always thought was odd.

Before those who like the swiping between faces jump out of their skins, remember, to each their own.

I will admit that this should be something the user could toggle on and off, but Apple does Apple.
 
JapanApple said:
I don’t understand people are saying you cannot change the face of the screen on the Apple Watch. used to like press and swipe left or right. Well I don’t know about you but I can still do that and I’m series 4. Is there something I’m missing? Really doesn’t matter if I’m on a series 4. Just some people just don’t like it in the obviously there’s no difference.
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There’s a very big difference. Before you just casually swipe left or right. Now you press, swipe, select. For instance, I used to have my calendar on a face next to my main face. To see the next appointment, I just casually swipe right, then left. Now, I have several cumbersome ways to do it, which each requires more attention.

Multiply this by 6-8 different casual tasks that I routinely use my watch for, that each have different approaches in the new design, and the result is that I might as well just get out my phone, which negates the whole purpose of the watch.
 
Velli said:
There’s a very big difference. Before you just casually swipe left or right. Now you press, swipe, select. For instance, I used to have my calendar on a face next to my main face. To see the next appointment, I just casually swipe right, then left. Now, I have several cumbersome ways to do it, which each requires more attention.

Multiply this by 6-8 different casual tasks that I routinely use my watch for, that each have different approaches in the new design, and the result is that I might as well just get out my phone, which negates the whole purpose of the watch.
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For your specific example, now you can setup a widget and just swipe up to check your next appointment.
 
BaldiMac said:
For your specific example, now you can setup a widget and just swipe up to check your next appointment.
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1: No, because my work requires me to use Outlook, which doesn’t seem to support widgets.

2: As far as I can tell, Siri decides the order they are shown in. So, I need to scroll around to find what I’m looking for. For instance, right now Siri decided to place two different calendar widgets for two appointments, and not next to each other.

I am willing to be educated, but so far I still consider it a mess. Plus, bugs!
 
BaldiMac said:
For your specific example, now you can setup a widget and just swipe up to check your next appointment.
Click to expand...
Also: My work has officers in four different time zones across the Globe. I used to use Modular with three world clock complications at the bottom, to get a quick glance at the time in sny of the other offices. Now, I either need to have that as my default, which is Butt-ugly, or use a big mess of tap, hold, swipe, tap etc. Again, unless someone shows me a neat solution.
 
Velli said:
1: No, because my work requires me to use Outlook, which doesn’t seem to support widgets.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. If they supported complications, hopefully they'll add widget support soon.

Velli said:
2: As far as I can tell, Siri decides the order they are shown in. So, I need to scroll around to find what I’m looking for. For instance, right now Siri decided to place two different calendar widgets for two appointments, and not next to each other.

I am willing to be educated, but so far I still consider it a mess. Plus, bugs!
Click to expand...
You can pin widgets to the top.
 
Swipe to change faces should absolutely be a user setting. For people who use it, they really like it and depend on it, it's core to how they use the watch. People who don't use it are annoyed when their face changes accidentally. Both are valid and it's the exact type of thing that should be user configured.

I get that Apple probably thinks it would collide with the swipe up for widgets feature, but people can learn to swipe right/left versus swipe up if they like that feature.
 
BaldiMac said:
Fair enough. If they supported complications, hopefully they'll add widget support soon.


You can pin widgets to the top.
Click to expand...
It’s very confusing to use… as far as I can tell, I can pin them to be shown, but not to an order. I just pinned two widgets and removed the rest. Then added a third widget, and it gets dropped in between the other two… I don’t see a way to rearrange them?

And, encountered a new bug where swiping up just gave me a black screen a couple of times, before it worked on the third try.

I’m giving up, switching to an ugly modular face that has my most important stuff on it, and see if I can live with that, until Apple hopefully cleans up this mess in a future update.
 
adm58 said:
You can press and hold on a widget, the stack will go into “wiggle mode” and you can rearrange the pinned widgets.
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Not on my watch (series 6 titanium). If I press and hold on a widget, I get a red “minus” to remove, and a toggle to pin. No wiggling, and I can’t drag them.
 
SantaFeNM said:
What finally seemed fixed in OS 9, was that Now Playing would automatically be opened with a wrist tilt when playing music from the phone. That has always been super convenient for me to adjust volume or skip a track. Now it's back to sometimes working, but mostly not. Frustrating.
Click to expand...
Appears to be fixed with Watch OS 10.0.1
 
iAssimilated said:
I only use one face and hate it when it accidentally changes faces on me.
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???

If you only have one watch face installed, it can't accidentally move to a different one — right?!

Just delete those other watch faces, leaving only your preferred one and you'll never inadvertently swipe again!

Yet, for those of us who use multiple watch faces with their own special complications, swiping is easy, fast, and useful. Only one action needed!

Or, am I missing something?!
 
Well, I regret updating my old series 4. Everything was much clearer and straightforward on OS9. The heart rate bpm takes ages to measure and often will not scroll to resting and walking screens. I've had to hard reboot twice to get the scroll back! The Rings screens are over complicated and less clear and too much scrolling to view the information. I don’t know how it got approved.

So rather underwhelming so far… 👀😬
 
Saturn007 said:
???

If you only have one watch face installed, it can't accidentally move to a different one — right?!

Just delete those other watch faces, leaving only your preferred one and you'll never inadvertently swipe again!

Yet, for those of us who use multiple watch faces with their own special complications, swiping is easy, fast, and useful. Only one action needed!

Or, am I missing something?!
Click to expand...

That is an option. Thanks!

Like I stated in my post, I do believe this should be a setting to turn on or off, but that's Apple's decision not mine.
 
BC2009 said:
After a press-and-hold, yes….. it is clumsy, it takes longer and if you accidentally tap that “Edit” button it will even take longer. It is like going back to a Series 2 or 3 Apple Watch. Many of us had various watch faces that we would quickly switch between much like people switch between “Focus” modes to get different home screens on iPhone. For example, you might have a workout face, a morning watch face, a going-out watch face, an evening watch face — each with the complications you needed in each scenario to get stuff done. you could place your #2 and #3 watch face on the left and right of your #1 watch face and each was a single swipe away.

this new way of doing it is actually and old way and is basically a regression.

on top of that, why did they eliminate the dock? why can’t I double-click the crown to open the dock instead of recent apps? it is like they wanted to eliminate all quick ways to get to the apps you most want to use and instead force you to hope for Siri’s “dumb stack” to guess correctly about what you want to do.

UPDATE: Here is the perfect analogy on the watch face problem. On your iPhone you have probably configured more than one Home Screen page. Each page has different app icons and different widgets and probably looks different. Some may be sparse with a big photos widget or a clear view of the wallpaper while others are dense with small widgets and lots of app icons. Now imagine you upgrade to iOS 17 and you can no longer swipe left to right between Home Screen Pages. Instead, you have to long press to enter Home Screen Edit mode switch pages and then exit edit mode. That is how this feels for anybody who used watch faces like Home Screen pages and quickly swiped between them.
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After using watchOS 10 for a few days I think I suffer less from this annoyance as I only have one other watch face meant for tracking my activity rings. The activity rings summary now shows up in the Smart Stack so a swipe up gives me a quick glance on the status.

Otherwise I’d need to long press and swipe to get the the other face, as well as enable it, since it doesn’t show the actual status until it’s activated.

If the info you need can be accessed via the Smart Stack, it might be worthwhile to change how we use the watch instead of trying to fight the UI changes.
 
Velli said:
Not on my watch (series 6 titanium). If I press and hold on a widget, I get a red “minus” to remove, and a toggle to pin. No wiggling, and I can’t drag them.
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Hmm, maybe try removing any one of the widgets first, exiting "wriggle mode", and then activating it again to see if you subsequently add more?
 
Weather complications are broken and don’t seem to update.

I really want to like Modular Ultra but the simple circular complications don’t show enough info. What I really want is a digital Infograph watch face since corner complications show more information.
 
iAssimilated said:
I know this is not a popular opinion, but I am excited for the long press requirement for changing watch faces. I only use one face and hate it when it accidentally changes faces on me. This was something I always thought was odd.

Before those who like the swiping between faces jump out of their skins, remember, to each their own.

I will admit that this should be something the user could toggle on and off, but Apple does Apple.
Click to expand...
Agree 100% I hated swiping to change the watch face so I’m glad it is gone. But I do think this should be a user option to put it back since the gesture hasn’t been used for something else.
 
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