Watch OS 10 launches today, and whilst it might not look like much has changed when you first
update your Watch, this is actually the biggest user interface update since the Watch launched.
I’m going to cover Watch OS much more in the coming weeks and months, but in this short video,
I’m going to show you the 7 things I think you should start using right away.
OK, let’s get into it.
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The most notable change to Watch OS 10, and the first thing you’re going to want to get your head
around, is the way in which you access content now. Previously, you’d have your Watch Face,
and you’d push the Digital Crown to then get you access to a specific app on your Watch,
or you’d tap on a complication like the Weather complication for example, to take you there. You
can still do that by the way, I can tap on this weather complication to go into the weather app.
In Watch OS 10, you simply turn the Digital Crown to take you into your Smart Stack.
The idea here is that most of what you want to view on your Watch consists of snippets
of information, most of the time, rather than full apps. The weather for example,
you don’t need to tap fully into the weather app, you’d probably be fine with
a little snippet of data to tell you what’s going on in the coming minutes and hours,
and then you can jump into the full app, or grab your phone, if you want to know more.
So Apple are calling these Widgets, and working with them is actually very similar to working with
widgets elsewhere in the Apple ecosystem. You would turn the Digital Crown to get
into this view, and then tap and hold on a widget for just a moment. This brings up an edit view.
The red minus allows you to remove a widget from your Smart Stack.
Tapping on a widget allows you to change it. Weather for example, there are different
datasets you can choose from within the Weather widget, so this would allow you to do that.
The Pin moves this widget to the top of the stack, giving it some visual priority. You
can pin more than one widget, but obviously it’s going to be a bit pointless if you pin everything,
so I would only use this for the stuff you’re really interested in.
Tapping the Plus button lets you choose from available widgets to add in.
And down at the bottom of this view is an All Apps button,
and tapping on that takes you to the App list, the same as tapping on the Digital Crown.
And that’s the Smart Stack. Quick reminder, turn the Digital Crown to access it,
and push the Digital Crown in to return to your regular Watch face.
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A change that you’ll notice when you start to dig into some of the apps on your Watch,
is that many of them have had a full redesign,
making them full screen and applying some of the design language from the other Apple products.
So here for example, the Sleep app gives much more rich,
detailed information that you can scroll through.
The Weather app looks beautiful now, with clear,
easy to view information on each page as you scroll through.
Activity now gives you full screen information for each of the different rings,
letting you drill down into the information right from your Watch.
Mindfulness now includes State of Mind,
which I’ll talk about separately in a moment, but it looks great.
The World Clock actually makes sense, as you can scroll through
your day and see night and day in relation to your current timezone.
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Previously on Watch, if you wanted to access the Control Centre, you’d swipe up on the screen,
which some people found fiddly and awkward. On WatchOS 10,
you just tap the Side button. Tap it once to access Control Centre,
tap it again to close it. It’s easy, quick, and feels much more deliberate this time around.
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There have been improvements to both Cycling and Hiking in Watch OS 10,
with the Cycling activity being able to work with compatible bluetooth accessories,
to allow for things like cadence, speed and power to be added to your workouts, and in hiking,
the compass now offers a 3D view, making it so much easier to set waypoints while you’re walking,
but more importantly to be able to head back to those waypoints later on if you need to.
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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.
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Mental Health has seen improvements across the iPhone and iPad this year,
so it’s nice to see that it’s also come to a device that you really will have with you
all the time, your Watch. If you tap the Digital Crown and scroll to Mindfulness,
there’s now an option in there called State of Mind.
If you tap on that, you can log how you’re feeling in that moment,
or how you’ve been feeling overall.
Use the Digital Crown to scroll through available options, and tap the Tick when you’re happy with
your choice. There’s also a back button if you wish to go back. You can continue working through,
choosing factors that are impacting your mood, and even adding context if you like.
You’ll be asked if you’d like to set a reminder up to track your mood on a recurring schedule,
which is how I’m going to be using this personally, and your Watch will then
remind you twice daily to pause and reflect. Over time, this creates really useful data,
which you view in the Health app on your iPhone, or now on your iPad.
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Offline Maps is a feature that’s technically come to the iPhone, but because your Watch is
connected to your iPhone, it’s a feature that can massively benefit Watch owners as well.
So on your Watch, open Maps, and you’ve got two options, you can either tap on your Apple ID,
then choose Offline Maps, and search for a location in there,
or you can do like I’m doing and search for a city. So having searched for London,
you can see that I have this Download option. Just tap on that,
move the rectangle to choose how much of the city you’d like to download, and you’re good to go.
This is going to benefit you with your Watch, because when you open Maps on your Watch,
provided you’re in an area that your phone has already downloaded, you don’t need data
to populate the map, and the GPS connection means that you’ll have a much easier time of
using Maps in an area where you perhaps know you struggle with poor data signal.
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So in iOS 17, if you try to
FaceTime somebody and they can’t answer, you can leave them a video message like I’m doing now,
and the nice thing about WatchOS 10 is you can even watch those videos on your Watch.
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So there you go, that’s Watch OS 10. It’s probably the smallest OS update out of
all of them this year, but it’s the one I’ve found has had the most impact on my daily use,
personally. What do you think of it so far? 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.