Gurman: Widgets to Be 'Central Part' of watchOS 10's Interface

[Simmias]

Looking forward to this. Besides Apple Pay and health tracking, the main role of the Apple Watch for me is being able to glance at my wrist and see key information and shortcuts. So I use the watch faces with the most complications and information, such as Infograph, Modular and Siri.

For the past few years, there have been very few advances to these faces or glanceable info in general. None of the new watch faces they've added have brought much in terms of new complications or functionality. Instead, we've gotten faces like California, Playtime and Color that offer cute graphics but very little new functionality. I've read that Photos is the most popular watch face, meaning that all most people see on their watch face is the time and a picture or their dog or kid. So very few people are leveraging the apps, complications or functionality that the watch has to offer.

I hope this new widget system makes the information and functionality more accessible at a glance and the watch a more useful tool in general. I think it's necessary to expand the common use cases of the watch, since most people are just using it as a step counter and way to get text notifications.

 

[segfaultdotorg]

They're finally bringing Windows 10 to the iWatch? About time. Windows 11 is already out and support for Win10 ends in a couple of years.

 

[rjjacobson]

Here is one concept. The widgets look cool but the problem is you can only have one widget activated at a time. Unless Apple decides to make the Apple Watch screen bigger which I don’t see it happening this year.

View attachment 2195537

I sorta like my watch the way it is. I use the way finder on my Ultra (in time mode as opposed to compass mode) With all kinds of my favorite apps in the complications I can put there (weather, date, caluculator, radar, wind, activity, timers, battery. I do not think I would use it this way @TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️ then the rest I can easily get by scrolling around on the icons. Glad this may just be optional. I hate major changes when I figure out how I like to use a device.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Hopefully, these widgets do not drain the battery life of the Apple Watch. That’s the most important thing for me.

I don’t understand why they would drain any more battery life than complications already do

 

[rjjacobson]

Looking forward to this. Besides Apple Pay and health tracking, the main role of the Apple Watch for me is being able to glance at my wrist and see key information and shortcuts. So I use the watch faces with the most complications and information, such as Infograph, Modular and Siri.

For the past few years, there have been very few advances to these faces or glanceable info in general. None of the new watch faces they've added have brought much in terms of new complications or functionality. Instead, we've gotten faces like California, Playtime and Color that offer cute graphics but very little new functionality. I've read that Photos is the most popular watch face, meaning that all most people see on their watch face is the time and a picture or their dog or kid. So very few people are leveraging the apps, complications or functionality that the watch has to offer.

I hope this new widget system makes the information and functionality more accessible at a glance and the watch a more useful tool in general. I think it's necessary to expand the common use cases of the watch, since most people are just using it as a step counter and way to get text notifications.

I pretty much used Infograph until I got my Ultra a month ago now with the wayfinder face in time mode as opposed to compass mode I have my favorite complications pretty much available and do not feel it hard to find the others when necessary by moving around on the icon view mode. For me most important are weather (I am weather nerd also) so I have my temperature from favorite weather app, wind from windy app, radar from radarscope, activity complication for quick setup for walking (about all I do LOL at 72 years old ), timers which I use a lot for BBQ and other things. Date of course connected to calendar appointments, battery to see what it is at although with Ultra battery life is much longer, and calculator. as I mentioned in another reply in this thread for me I will not likely use this new capability I like what I can see at a glance on watch.

 

[rjjacobson]

don't use widgets on my iPhone, don't need them.
don't bloat watchOS up Apple

Yeah I don’t use them much either on my phone. Weather, time zones on one screen and my Lock Screen (also appointments there — but I am retired not as busy as most of you LOL)

 

[surfzen21]

I sorta like my watch the way it is. I use the way finder on my Ultra (in time mode as opposed to compass mode) With all kinds of my favorite apps in the complications I can put there (weather, date, caluculator, radar, wind, activity, timers, battery. I do not think I would use it this way @TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️ then the rest I can easily get by scrolling around on the icons. Glad this may just be optional. I hate major changes when I figure out how I like to use a device.View attachment 2195594

Same watch face I use and find it gives me all or most of the info I'm looking for at a glance.

For me it has Temperature, sunrise/sunset time, fitness rings and battery life on the 4 outside complications.

The inside complications are moon phase, wind speed and direction, tide cycle and calendar.

This covers all the main things I need for surfing, skating and running.

 

[cdarlington1]

Glanceable information that is updated frequently would be welcome. Nothing worse than clicking a complication on a watch face only to find out that the number it was showing was not the actual number.

 

[NT1440]

I’m imagining the framework for Live Activities is likely to play a key role here…

 

[siddavis]

And add a notch also.

Ha, I was thinking the same, except it has to be that “iconic” island instead.

 

[satchmo]

yeah, get rid of the digital crown while your at it and replace it with simple buttons

At the very least, allow developers more control of the Digital Crown for specific actions.

 

[siddavis]

Glanceable information that is updated frequently would be welcome. Nothing worse than clicking a complication on a watch face only to find out that the number it was showing was not the actual number.

This. This. This. I hate that some of my complications do not stay updated. Background app refresh is BS.

 

[vegetassj4]

Three...Two....One...Widgetgate

 

[vegetassj4]

Well, this looks awkward! 🥴

View attachment 2195535

Notches are so yesterday, do a dynamic island...or Dynamic Islet since it is so small on the watch 😁

 

[d686546s]

I don't think I have a good idea in my head of how this would look like so I'll hold off judgement until I see it.

What I really want are two things:

First, slightly more flexibility on watch faces and complications. It would be great to have third party watch faces, but more importantly just let me use whichever complication with any watch face as long as it fits. Why does a round slot on one face just let me launch the weather app when on another it'll show me the temperature. It's ridiculous.

Second, it would be great if the watch was smart enough to just offer me existing complications dependent on usage patterns or other parameters rather than having to do different watch faces. For example, when I wait at my bus stop in the morning I would like to quickly check how long it'll take the bus to arrive, but I don't need that complication for the rest of the day and I don't want to create a separate watch face for it. I'll be honest, yes I could just find the app but at that point it's almost easier to just use the phone.

 

[3xBoom]

I'd take a longer-lasting battery over any widgets. The screen is so tiny for anything useful that they should be called midgets anyways.

 

[3xBoom]

And add a notch also.

Someone should make an app called Buenas Notches allowing the placement of any number of notches on the screen.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Notches are so yesterday, do a dynamic island...or Dynamic Islet since it is so small on the watch 😁

Here you go. I don’t know about this one either. This one definitely can’t be missed. 😂 🤷🏻‍♀️

 

[ipedro]

The Watch’s weakness is Apple’s insistence trying to port the successful AppStore model of its older brother, the iPhone to the Watch. It hasn’t worked and will not work on such a small device intended for quick glanceable interactions, not lingering engagements.

Thankfully, Apple seems to have recognized this and has been building the infrastructure on iOS where the App Store is healthy and appending glanceable versions of iOS apps to the apps themselves. iOS Widgets and Live Activities work well on the iPhone Lock Screen which (not so coincidentally) are perfectly suited for a Watch face.

Getting developers to build them for iPhone is a great strategy to then easily make them available on Watch, finally leveraging the iPhone App Store‘s success and creating a rich ecosystem of third party support for Apple Watch.

 

[diggy33]

I'd just be happy if Apple would open up a watch face store where devs could submit their own watch faces based on some parameters that Apple set. There are so many cool faces that would come out of that. Maybe one day.

Thats about the only thing I miss about the Galaxy watch I used to have

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

when I wait at my bus stop in the morning I would like to quickly check how long it'll take the bus to arrive, but I don't need that complication for the rest of the day and I don't want to create a separate watch face for it. I'll be honest, yes I could just find the app but at that point it's almost easier to just use the phone.

But doesn’t what’s being described in this rumor pretty much solve your problem?
An overlay menu that comes up when you hit one of the buttons that’s full of updatable widgets that obviously are going to have more info then complications do now…
Certainly an improvement over searching for the application you want to use

 

[vegetassj4]

They are prepping watchOS 10 for the new Apple Watch Studio, which will be able to fully use multiple widgets. I was fortunate enough to be on the beta test team, and I understand they are working on slimming down the bezels:

 

[Kierkegaarden]

Looking forward to this. I would like the Watch to act as a mobile device on my wrist instead of a watch, so the interface could be less watch-like. These rumors point to positive interface changes, and maybe this means larger devices in the future — I think they’re close to tapped out on height, but they should be able to edge out the width a bit.

 

[Kylo83]

Don’t need widgets on the watch; to be fair no one really uses much that just looking at the watch

 

[Edsel]

Will Watch OS10 show me the >TIME< or will it continue to tell me to; Breath, Stand-Up, New Messages... instead?
Every time I go to glance at my Apple Watch for the time, it tells me something else. I'm about ready to replace it with a simple Timex.