Apples watchOS platform doesn’t have as many customization options as other smartwatches, like the one built on Google’s Wear OS, do. But there are countless ways to Make your Apple Watch your own, more than just picking the color, size and strap of your watch. Here are the most important features you should know and how to use them.
The Watch app on your iPhone gives you a few customization options to get you started. Crane App view and you can choose between a grid and a list for your apps (displayed when you press the digital crown); with a schedule, you can also tap Arrangement to place all your apps exactly the way you want them.
Then there is the dock, which you pull up by pressing the side button on your Apple Watch. This one shows your most recent apps or up to 10 of your favorite apps. To tell you see which apps you want to view, tap Dock in the Watch app for iOS and choose Recent or Favorites (if you choose the latter, you can select both the apps you want to see and the order in which they appear).
Watch faces
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Apple hasn’t yet thrown its doors open to a community of third-party watch face developers, but there are a growing number of Apple-approved faces to choose from (for the Apple Watch Series 4 and later). Swipe left or right to switch to a new watch face from your current watch on the current face to see your options.
If you’ve only just set up your Apple Watch, you don’t actually have many options. You can tap New, and Apple presents a selection of faces for inspection. Swipe up or down on the screen to scroll through it. When you find something you like, tap a watch face to set it (it will also be added to the quick pick list that appears when you click the current dial).
You may find it easier to set watch faces from your phone. When you open the Watch app, you can tap Facial gallery to see all available options. Here you will not only see a variety of faces, but also several variations of those faces. When you select one, you can choose the colors it uses (if available) and the complications you will see (again, if the watch face supports them).
Crane Add on a watch face and it is added to the My faces box on the My watch tab – tap Edit to change the faces in this list. This is the same list you see when you swipe your watch face to see more options—It’s a good idea to save the faces you use most often here for easy access. Tapping on any of these shortlisted faces in the app on your phone will take you to the customization screen, where you can also choose to Set as current watch face or Remove watch face.
Once you have a few dials in it My faces gallery, you can swipe your watch screen to swipe between them. You’ll have to hold down if you want to share a watch face look you’re particularly excited about, because that’s where you’ll find the share button in the lower left corner.
Watch for complications
Some watch faces have complications, and they are small shortcuts leading to apps or functions, or panels that show information in real time. Again, you can change these complications from your watch or from your phone. To do this on the wearable, tap and hold the watch face and choose Edit. You will see the color options first and then you can swipe left to see the complication options.
Tap one of the available complications to change it to something else, then scroll the digital crown to make your selection. Your choice depends on what kind of complication it is and what apps you have installed. Make your selection, then press the digital crown twice to return to the watch face display.
As with watch faces, this is something that is probably easier to set up through the Watch app on your iPhone. You can tap any face in My faces or on the Facial gallery to get to the complications, which you can then easily run through. Some watch faces have more complications than others, and while you can’t rearrange them on the screen, you can turn off certain watch faces if you want.
If you feel like you need more complications to play around with, look for iPhone apps that also have decent Apple Watch apps and complications. You can get music complications with it Spotify, weather complications with Carrot Again, watch for complications with Bear, and travel complications with Stadsmapper, for example. Some complications display information, while others allow interaction.
It is possible to create your own complications to some extent using the same tools that developers use. The best option we’ve found so far is Watchsmith, with which you can create complications related to weather, time and date, astronomy and more, and also has options to change complications depending on the time.
Other tweaks
There are a few other ways you can customize the look of what you see on your Apple Watch. If you choose Display and brightness from the Watch app on your iPhone, you can, for example, adjust the screen brightness, turn the Always on function on or off (if available), change the size of the text on the Apple Watch screen and make that text bold if you want. You can also make these changes in the Settings app on the watch itself.
One way to fully personalize your Apple Watch is through set your own photo as your watch face. If you open the Photos app on your watch, select an image and tap the little watch icon in the lower left corner, you can apply the image as a background, either as a simple image or in a kaleidoscope effect.
This is actually the idea behind it To do also, with custom designs created by other people, not third partieslot of dials, but different backgrounds and complication combinations that people want to show off. If a watch face you select uses a complication from an app you don’t have installed, you will be prompted to install it.
It doesn’t take too much effort to create background images specifically for the Apple Watch in your favorite image editor of your choice. All you need to do is find the screen resolution of your Apple Watch and leave room for the digital watch face that Apple stores on it (if you choose a kaleidoscope effect, you get the analog hands, but there’s no way to choose specific).
Finally, it is also worth mentioning Apple’s Shortcuts app. If you run the app on your smartwatch, then you can launch compatible actions right from your wrist and even set them as complications on your watch faces. It’s another way to create custom complications – in this case, set to launch shortcuts that you find useful.