Can you trim Glances?

[Smurphy Gherkin]

Glances.

In some review videos you see 4 dots at the bottom, in others I have seen about a dozen.

Swiping through a dozen glances seems less like glances and more like reading a book.

Can you control which show up, and in what order?

 

[madsci954]

I believe you can.

 

[zed2]

Yes you do this in the iPhone Watch App.. Where you can specify which apps have access to your watch and which glances are displayed and Which notifications are pushed to the watch.

 

[DreamPod]

Think of Glances kinda like the dock on a Mac - you choose to put your favorite apps in there for easy access. Though note that not all watch apps contain a Glance.

 

[zacheryjensen]

Think of Glances kinda like the dock on a Mac - you choose to put your favorite apps in there for easy access. Though note that not all watch apps contain a Glance.

Seems more comparable to widgets except you can only see one at a time. I suppose even the dock metaphor has that same discrepancy.

Personally, I think the biggest problem people will have with the watch is their own laziness about managing these kinds of things. Notifications and glances... they will just leave them all on then proceed to bitch about how hard it is to use glances and how often they get useless notifications.

This is probably going to be the sort of product where I have to force myself to completely ignore every other human expressing their opinion about it for a couple of years.

 

[Camusrieux]

Personally, I think the biggest problem people will have with the watch is their own laziness about managing these kinds of things. Notifications and glances... they will just leave them all on then proceed to bitch about how hard it is to use glances and how often they get useless notifications.

Yup. That's a big chunk of Nilay Patel's Verge review right there.

 

[Arran]

Yup. That's a big chunk of Nilay Patel's Verge review right there.

I bought a Garmin Vivosmart band Monday. Now, for the first time ever, I'm getting buzzes and text-based notifications on my wrist. FYI, It got old after about 30 mins. Notifications that are easy to ignore on the phone, are very annoying on your wrist.

So I went into iPhone settings and trimmed my notifications down considerably. Turned them OFF on most apps. Life is good again.

I'd suggest everyone prune their notifications this week while they wait for their watch to be delivered.

 

[Camusrieux]

Personally, I think the biggest problem people will have with the watch is their own laziness about managing these kinds of things. Notifications and glances... they will just leave them all on then proceed to bitch about how hard it is to use glances and how often they get useless notifications.

Yup. That's a big chunk of Nilay Patel's Verge review right there.

I bought a Garmin Vivosmart band Monday. Now, for the first time ever, I'm getting buzzes and text-based notifications on my wrist. FYI, It got old after about 30 mins. Notifications that are easy to ignore on the phone, are very annoying on your wrist.

I don't understand what this has to do with my (or Zachary Jensen's) comment. Do you think that what you're saying is news to me? I backed the original Kickstarter Pebble; I wore that watch from the time I received it in 2013 until it died several months later. (And Patel has long been familiar with the category, too.) I know perfectly well what it's like to have notifications on one's wrist. As it happens, I am fairly narrow with my Notification Center settings; calls, texts, and calendar reminders are all that my phone is ever allowed to bug me about.

Yes, smartwatches bring notifications to one's attention more effectively and immediately than smartphones do. The point is that that is old news. It is not a fact that the Apple Watch has suddenly made true. The absurd skit involving Sonia Chopra in Patel's video review presents notification overload as some kind of severe problem with Apple's execution of the Watch. It isn't; it merely demonstrates the heightened importance (as you note) of managing notifications on one's phone. Patel mentions that fact as well—but if a user actually takes the idea seriously, the whole "problem" of having important business meetings interrupted by notifications of Instagram likes (oh, God) ceases to exist. It's a ridiculous complaint, and a stupid "product problem" to highlight in a review. Not least because it applies to any device whatsoever that makes notifications more noticeable.

 

[T-Will]

I bought a Garmin Vivosmart band Monday. Now, for the first time ever, I'm getting buzzes and text-based notifications on my wrist. FYI, It got old after about 30 mins. Notifications that are easy to ignore on the phone, are very annoying on your wrist.

So I went into iPhone settings and trimmed my notifications down considerably. Turned them OFF on most apps. Life is good again.

I'd suggest everyone prune their notifications this week while they wait for their watch to be delivered.

I think the Watch app allows you to disable notifications for specific apps from being sent to your Watch, so you can still leave the notifications enabled on your iPhone.

 

[JayHova]

I think glances are like the "Today" View on the iphone.

You can choose which glances appear, and change their order.

 

[zmunkz]

I think the Watch app allows you to disable notifications for specific apps from being sent to your Watch, so you can still leave the notifications enabled on your iPhone.

I hope that distinction is there... I'll want to control each separately.

 

[Smurphy Gherkin]

Had a play in store, and scrolling quickly across a dozen glances is great, it does not pause and load, it will skip past, so much much less of a worry than I thought.

 

[KauaiBruce]

I bought a Garmin Vivosmart band Monday. Now, for the first time ever, I'm getting buzzes and text-based notifications on my wrist. FYI, It got old after about 30 mins. Notifications that are easy to ignore on the phone, are very annoying on your wrist.

So I went into iPhone settings and trimmed my notifications down considerably. Turned them OFF on most apps. Life is good again.

I'd suggest everyone prune their notifications this week while they wait for their watch to be delivered.

This is great advice. I just recently did a major overhaul because I was getting too many on the pebble. I now only see email from 2 of my 9 email accounts. No more Facebook notifications either. THAT was annoying.

 

[Arran]

I think the Watch app allows you to disable notifications for specific apps from being sent to your Watch, so you can still leave the notifications enabled on your iPhone.

Yeah, you're right. It could work differently for the apple Watch. My band simply mirrors my iPhone's Notification Center.

Having said that, it's still worthwhile trimming down appears in Notification Center itself. I was just letting every app put whatever it wanted there. So much so, that it had become a cluttered mess I hadn't looked at in years.

After cleanup, it shows me useful info at a glance - More as Apple intended.

 

[zmunkz]

This has now been answered:

http://mashable.com/2015/04/08/apple-watch-review/

"You can control which app notifications show on the watch through the iPhone-based utility. The visibility of those app, email and social notifications, which are the same as on your iPhone, can be managed on a case-by-case basis through the Apple Watch utility."