This is a great step forward imo. i don't use many apps so this would be ideal instead of going to home screen and finding the app i want
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Here's How Apple Watch Widgets Work in watchOS 10
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The problem with AI widgets so far is that the system is right about what I want to see maybe 25% of the time. This is definitely not a replacement for favorites.
That’s terrible news!!What I really don't like in watchOS 10 is that Apple removed the ability to swipe between watch faces. Now you have to long press on the watch face to enter edit mode and then swipe
Apple taketh and giveth. I am not a fan of removing easy watch face swapping. They spend so much time redoing the interface which was fine already and making it different. And knowing apple it will take one OS cycle to re-implement features they took away.
Can we get a better system to upload off line music we own?
Can we get a better system to upload off line music we own?
Seems like most commenters are saying the same thing: The existing functions actually worked pretty well, people like favorites and don’t necessary see a need for widgets, and people would prefer the favorites be even quicker to access.
Solution: Create an option to use the side button for either a “complications drawer” to quickly bring up complications for favorite apps, or widgets, at the user’s option. Barring that, have that button show favorites (on one screen), but have scrollable widgets right below the favorites. Keep all other button/scrolling functionality the same.
Solution: Create an option to use the side button for either a “complications drawer” to quickly bring up complications for favorite apps, or widgets, at the user’s option. Barring that, have that button show favorites (on one screen), but have scrollable widgets right below the favorites. Keep all other button/scrolling functionality the same.
Looking forward to these widgets but some of the other changes seem like they will be quite jarring.
A reasonable idea but I think the underlying issue giving rise to these discussions, and others about the UI, is that Apple does not offer enough options to configure it to an individual user's tastes. That's especially important for a device like the Apple Watch because being a small device (small screen compared to an iPhone and not a lot of physical controls - buttons and crowns) there aren't that many different ways to interact with the watch; there are only so many physical (button/crown) actions available and due to the small screen size only a limited amount of sufficiently distinct tap and swipe areas that can be offered. I think of this as a "narrow" UI, potentially a lot of different actions need to be packed into a limited range of available buttons, gestures and tap targets.
What all of that says to me is that for any of those limited number of UI interactions to be wasted, or not used at all, is a serious thing. As an example on my watch I don't really use the dock so the single-side-button-press is wasted (for me). I would love to be able to configure that to do what I want. You have described exactly how you would want to use the single-press on the side button, I would probably map mine to simply launch the Workout app, but either way we would both at least be making the maximum use we can of the limited number of quick and convenient and always-available UI interactions available to us.
Looking further into the watch-face-switching thing from the perspective I outlined above, it would appear that after this change the left and right swipes on a watch face will no longer do anything at all. Again, I find it very sad that 2 more potentially useful (to some users) quick and easy UI interactions (swipe-left and swipe-right) are now wasted.
I'm also a bit sad about the control centre now being the thing that is hard-mapped onto the side button single-press because again, for my use, launching the control centre is a rare event and I have far more frequent operations that I would like to map to that UI element. There I wonder why Apple doesn't take a cue from older iOS versions when the iPhone had 2 downward swipes, one from the top lefthand side of the home screen I seem to remember showed notifications and a downward swipe from the top righthand side of the home screen showed the control centre. Although an Apple Watch screen is small (and I wear the smallest size) I've role-played it on my watch and it is 100% natural and not confusing or error-prone to me to imagine having 2 downward swipes available on a watch face, one to the left of the 12-o-clock marker and the other to the right. That way people could for instance have the downward swipe on the left doing notifications and the one on the right doing control centre so that the single-press on the side button again becomes available for each user to use it for whatever they consider most useful.
I was hoping that in beta 2 Apple might return the swipe through watch faces functionality buuut unfortunately they didn't.
I mostly agree that having more user-definable options is a good thing for a limited and inherently personal user interface such as that on the Watch. I would enjoy anything that helps me customize my Watch so that it efficiently handles my particular needs.
Whether or not Apple give us that, though (the writing on the wall does not look good) it's still worth noting that some of the Watch's features work better for demos than they to in real life. Widgets, for example, tend to look cool but may not be as convenient in the moment as a "complications drawer" might be. I would argue that was also the case with the existing dock, which required much more user interaction (scrolling, trying to square-up a particular card in order to press on it) than should have been necessary. Apple sometimes tries to do too much.
So you're right that the ability to customize is ideal, but I believe the next-best thing is to have simple and straightforward ways to get to the stuff we need, and there are many improvements that could be made in that area alone.
I agree with all of that, and I share your perception about the writing on the wall not looking good.
On the "complications drawer" I wonder how close widgets might get us to that. I note from screenshots I've seen in various articles and videos talking about WatchOS widgets that one widget option is what looks to be 3 complications in a row. If that widget can be customised (select which three complications you want) which I'm sure will be the case and if you can then choose to have more than one instance of that widget in your stack, each instance with a different three complications configured, then pinning say the top 3 widgets in your stack to be three different three-complication widgets would give you 9 extra complications that you could get at by swiping up or turning the crown. If that is possible then I'm not necessarily saying that would be a solution that I would like - and I'm not saying it wouldn't be a solution that would work for me - I'm just reserving judgement until I can actually try it. If it is possible though then I will certainly be doing some experiments with the three-complication widget to see what it might add to my user experience.
On the current Dock I absolutely agree. I really wanted an option to supress the app previews (the card format) because for me they didn't show enough of the app content to be useful because the cards in the dock overlapped each other so they partially obscured each other yet using up extra screen space for the "I'll show you a bit of the screen" previews increased scrolling and made the dock more difficult to use vs had it just been a simple list like the main app launcher in list rather than honeycomb view.
Ultimately I'm reserving judgement on all of this until I have had a chance to play around with it myself. It took me almost 3 years to like the honeycomb view for the app launcher (just in time for Apple to remove it it seems!) so perhaps I'll love doing almost everything through widgets, or perhaps I wont. Time will telll.
draft - fastic or some other intermittent fasting company or a group of the companies / apps etc should partner with a hardware manufacturer to build their own smartwatch hardware to bring quality intermittent fasting apps + widgets to a smartwatch. In 10 years, watchos fasting apps still function with zero body status information (blood sugar stabilizes, ketosis, autophagy etc...+little paragraph explanations) and all they are is timers. The point of an intermittent fasting app and widget is to provide a little extra kick of motivation, knowing you can glance at a home screen widget or an app and see "ketosis...your body is now burning fat etc..." is good, but what would be even better is if this came to a smartwatch so you could just glance at your watch to see that screen.
I mean, it'd be nice if they could just bring these experiences / apps/ widgets etc to existing smartwatch platforms like watchos and wearOS, but since it doesn't seem to be happening, I'm wondering what the reason is
I mean, it'd be nice if they could just bring these experiences / apps/ widgets etc to existing smartwatch platforms like watchos and wearOS, but since it doesn't seem to be happening, I'm wondering what the reason is