# Script
# Intro
Back in December, I made my first proper Apple Watch Tips and Tricks video, I'll link
to it in the description of this one, and the overwhelming feedback that I got on that video
was that most people really had no idea of what their Watch was capable of. So, in this video,
I'm going to share 12 more tips and tricks related to the Watch, which I wish I knew ages ago.
OK, let's get into it.
# Make conference calls from your Watch
You can not only make phone calls from your Apple Watch;
you can also make group calls, and it's very easy to do using FaceTime.
Open the Phone app and find the first person you would like to call. Tap on
the phone icon and choose FaceTime audio to begin your call. Once on the call,
tap the ellipsis button in the lower right of the screen and choose "Add People". You can
then follow the steps to add additional people to your call. You can do this as the person who
started the call, but you can also do this as a participant on the call, so if there are a few
of you and you want to quickly get everyone together, you should all be able to do this.
Apple doesn't make it clear what the limit is in terms of the number of people you can have
on the call, although they do mention in group FaceTime calls on the iPhone
that the limit is 32 people, so I would assume that same limit would apply here.
# Use your Watch's secret browser
Your Apple Watch has a Safari browser, but you can't access it like you can regular
apps on the watch. You have to use a workaround to be able to access it,
and there are two good ones that I'm going to show you here. The only one that I knew
of until recently was sending yourself a message that contained a web address and then tapping on
the address in that message, but there is actually a much easier way of doing this,
and it's right under your nose. Use your iPhone's voice assistant.
So, let's say, for example, that I wanted to visit the page
[wired.co.uk](http://wired.co.uk). Simply access Siri and say, "Open
[wired.co.uk](http://wired.co.uk)." Your watch will return the results saying that
it's found information on the web. Scroll to the bottom of this page,
and choose "Open Page." This will open the page in a Safari browser. From this point on, you should
be able to scroll using the digital crown and tap around the website as you normally would.
While this works, I would stress that most websites are not designed to be
viewed on something as small as your Apple Watch,
and you will definitely have a mixed experience depending on the websites that you visit.
But what if you don't want to do this using your voice? You
can create a Shortcut and place it as a complication on your Watch.
So, we start by opening the Shortcuts app on our iPhone. Go all the way to the main
Shortcuts page, where you should see all the different folders you have,
and one of these should be for your Apple Watch. Tap into this.
Tap the plus button in the upper right corner of the screen to create a new shortcut. Tap
into the search bar at the bottom of the screen and type "URL." There's only one
option that matches this, so choose it from the list. You can see that for this option,
what we need to do is insert a URL that we would like to open when we enable the
shortcut. You might want this to always go to a specific website. I would recommend
that you choose a search engine. For this, I would normally recommend Google,
but the way that Google always displays a cookies pop-up every time you go to it makes this pretty
much unusable on your Apple Watch. So instead, I would actually recommend that you choose Bing.
Tap into the search bar at the bottom of the screen once more and search for "Show Web
View." Tap the downward-pointing arrow at the top of the screen,
give this shortcut a name, and then tap "Done."
Finally, you're going to want to add this as a complication to your watch face. So,
to do this, open the Watch app on your iPhone, tap into the watch face that
you'd like to add this to, scroll down to complications, select a complication slot,
then scroll down to Shortcuts. Choose the shortcut from the list of available options.
And that's it, you now have a web browser on your watch at the touch of a button.
# Change a timer while it's running
If you have a timer going on your Watch, and you suddenly realise
that you need it to run for longer, rather than waiting for it to finish,
then starting a new one, you can edit the existing one, and you can do it using Siri.
So for example, let's say that I've got a timer running, and it's got a few minutes left,
and I want to add 10 minutes to it, I would simply access Siri and say "change my timer". It will
ask you what you want to change it to, and you'd simply state the current time, plus 10 minutes,
so if there's 2 minutes left, you'd say 12 minutes. It would be even better if you could
just say something like "add 10 minutes to my timer" of course, but this does get the job done.
# PDF Shoutout
By the way, if you prefer to have content like this in a written format, there’s a PDF version of
this video, complete with screenshots, and you can access it, along with all other PDFs I’ve created,
plus future ones, for just $5 a month. You can either scan the QR code that you can
see on-screen, or follow the link in the description of this video to learn more.
# Scribble on your Watch
Typing on the Watch can be a bit hit-and-miss. I have small hands,
and even I find typing on the keyboard to be a bit of a mess. Honestly,
the best way to type on the Apple Watch is to use Siri, but there may be times
when this isn't suitable for you. When that's the case, try out Scribble instead.
To do this, you need to be in a text input field. So, here, for example,
I'm in the content field of a message, and you can see that I have the keyboard showing
on screen. At the bottom of the screen is an upward-pointing arrow. Swipe up, and you
can see that you can choose between keyboard and Scribble mode. When you choose Scribble,
the majority of your watch face becomes a scribble pad. You use your finger to begin scribbling
out the letters for the word that you want to create. Generally, this has really good accuracy,
and when you get to the end of a word, you tap the spacebar to move onto the next one.
I wouldn't recommend using this to type out your next novel, but for a quick reply to a
message where you need to type something very specific, it can be really useful.
# Calculate a tip and split a bill
Something I find really weird about the Apple ecosystem is that certain features
that are really useful appear on some devices but not on others, even though those other
devices would be absolutely capable of running that feature. This is a good example of that.
Let's say you're out for dinner with friends, and the bill gets put down on the table. You want to
work out what a specific tip amount would be, and then work out what the per-person
split of the bill would be. The calculator on your watch has this feature built into it.
Open the calculator and type in the total amount. Then tap on the tip button. Here,
you can specify the percentage of the tip that you would like to add to the overall
bill and choose the number of people with whom you're going to split that
amount. Your watch will give you the total amount as well as the split per person.
I guess I can understand why you wouldn't have this feature on the Mac or the iPad,
but it still baffles me that you can't do this on your iPhone calculator.
But at least if you own an Apple Watch, now you know how to do it.
# The Proper Weekly
By the way, if you’re enjoying the content here, why not consider signing up for my
FREE newsletter, The Proper Weekly. I discuss tech news from the week,
share links to content that I’ve been enjoying, as well as a tip for an item in the Apple ecosystem.
The newsletter goes out each Friday, it’s completely free, and you can sign up via
the link in the description of this video, or by scanning the QR code that you can see on-screen.
# Share a Watch Face
Have you ever noticed a watch face that someone else is using and thought to
yourself that you'd like to use it too? Or has someone ever seen your watch face and
asked if you would share it with them? This is really easy to do on your Apple Watch.
So, let's say, for example, that the watch face I'm currently using is something that I want to
share with another person. I would tap and hold for just a second to get into the watch face
edit mode. You'll notice that next to the edit button, there is a share button. Tap on this,
and you can see that you can share either via messages or via an email. If you tap on
the name of the watch face at the top, you can choose which complications you would
like to include or exclude from the share. The default is that all of them will be included,
and the good news here is that the data will not be passed across. So, if for example,
one of your complications was your activity, you would only be sharing the fact that an
activity complication exists within this face. It wouldn't share any of your personal data.
Choose the method of sharing that you would like to use and choose the person that you
would like to share it with, and that's it. You've shared a copy of this watch face.
# Get a reminder to charge your Watch
I honestly believe that if you don't wear your Apple Watch while you're sleeping, you're missing
out on a couple of really key features. The first is the watch's ability to track your sleep and
give you really interesting data about the quality of your sleep. The second is that it can wake you
using a silent alarm; your watch just vibrates on your wrist at the time that you need to wake up.
But in order to make the most of this feature, you need to ensure that your watch is charged
and that there's enough charge for you to wear your watch overnight. Your watch
has a feature built-in to help you do this, but it isn't enabled by default.
On your iPhone, open the Watch app and scroll down until you see the Sleep
app. Tap into it and toggle charging reminders on. What this will do is,
it will notify you in the run-up to your bedtime to remind you to charge your watch,
that way you know that you've got a full charge ready for when you go to sleep. It will also send
you a notification on your phone to let you know when your watch is fully charged. To be honest,
this is a handy feature to have regardless of whether you're using your watch overnight or not.
# Find out how much time you're spending in daylight
If you're anything like me, you probably spend far too much time sitting behind a computer screen and
could do with spending a lot more time out in daylight. If you own an Apple Watch, you can
find out exactly how much time you are spending in daylight with a data point in the Health app.
Open the Health app and tap the Browse button in the bottom right of the screen.
Tap into Mental Well-being, and you can see that one of the data points
in here is Time in Daylight. This is exactly what it sounds like,
and it will give you data about how much time you're spending outside. This will either be the
kick up the backside you need to get out more, or if you're anything like me as a new parent,
a sad reminder of how things used to be in the days when leaving the house was a piece of cake.
# Use the 'peak' feature of Theatre Mode
You might already know about Theatre mode, but if you don't, it's a feature that's designed for when
you're at the cinema or a theatre or somewhere where you don't want to be disturbed on your
watch or have your watch disturb other people. To access it, open Control Centre and tap on the
Theatre mode icon. Your watch display will switch off, and notifications will be silenced while this
feature is enabled. The idea, of course, is that you can get on with watching whatever it is that
you're watching without being disturbed, and you would just disable it when you're done.
But what if you want to quickly check the time while Theatre mode is enabled, but you don't
want to completely disable it? Gently rotate the digital crown upwards. This will slowly illuminate
the display just enough for you to be able to read the time. When you're done, you can either rotate
the digital crown back, or you can tap the screen with your palm to turn the display off again.
# Keep an App on-screen
A feature of your Watch is that when you lower your wrist, your Watch recognises this and either
turns the display off or, if you have an always-on display, it will dim the display. Importantly,
it will always return back to the watch face. This is how your watch is designed to work,
but this can be really annoying if you're trying to look at something on your watch,
lower your wrist, and then raise your wrist back up only to find that the app
you were viewing has disappeared. There is a setting that you can change to fix this.
You can change the setting on your watch if you like, but I think it's much easier
to do this using the Watch app on your iPhone. Open the Watch app, scroll down,
and choose General. In there, scroll down until you see an option called Return to
Clock. Tap on this, and you can see that you have two options. You can either set
the setting for every app on your watch in one go or you can do this on an app-by-app basis.
So, the default, as you can see, is to always return to the clock; in other words, every time
I lower my wrist, my watch will recognise this and display the clock. The app that I'm using is
still running by the way, I could double tap the digital crown to quickly jump back into that app.
The alternative is I could say that I only want to return to the clock after
two minutes or after an hour. Don't ask me why there's such a huge gap between the two-minute
option and the one-hour option; to me, it would've made a lot more sense for Apple
to give us a few different time options here, but this is what we're working with.
In general, I want to return to the clock, but there are a few apps where I would like the app
in question to remain on my wrist for as long as I'm using it. For example, the Settings app,
if I'm changing a Setting on my watch, sometimes I need to stop what I'm doing and check something
on my phone or computer, it would be good if the app would still be on my wrist a minute later. So,
I would tap into Settings, then choose Custom, and change it to after two minutes.
The nice thing about this is that Apple allows you to customise it per app, so hopefully, no
matter how you like to use your Watch, you should be able to find a setting that works for you here.
# Swipe to change Watch Faces
This one is less of a trick, more the return of a feature that was much loved in previous versions
of watchOS, that Apple removed in watchOS 10. Essentially, you can see that if I swipe from
left to right on the Home screen of my Watch, I can swipe between my different watch faces.
Apple disabled this in the latest watchOS, which upset a lot of people. It's now back,
but it's off by default, so you have to enable it if you want it.
On your Watch, go to Settings, then Clock,
and enable Swipe to Switch Watch Face. One thing to point out, I believe the
reason Apple removed this originally is that people were doing this accidentally,
so keep that in mind. You might prefer to have it disabled, but it's here if you want it.
# Water mode for parents
This one is really niche, which is why I'm including it as a bonus tip rather than one
of the 12 main tips, but as a new parent, I figured it was too good not to include. My
wife and I have very young twins. When I hold them in my left hand, I often find that little grabby
baby hands like to reach down and touch whatever they can get hold of, which, if I'm holding them
in my left hand, is usually the face of my watch. My kids have accidentally sent messages to people,
called people off of my iPhone by tapping things on my watch, set alarms for the middle of the
night for me, and whilst this is all kind of funny, it can also be really annoying too.
The best way to deal with this is to use Water Lock mode. Tap the side button to
enter Control Centre and tap the water icon. The whole point of Water Lock mode is that
the watch still functions as normal, but the screen becomes unresponsive to touch.
This is because you would usually use Water Lock underwater, where the display is likely to react
to accidental interactions. It works great with the accidental interactions of your kids too.
When you're ready to use your watch as normal again,
simply tap and hold the Digital Crown for a moment to come out of Water Lock mode.
# End
So there you go, 12 tips and tricks for the Watch that you might not have known.
Oh and check out my previous video if you've not already,
where I shared 20 other Watch tips and tricks. What do you think,
anything that should have been included here that wasn't? Drop me a comment and let me know.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like,
and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.