The Complete Guide to Personalizing Your Apple Watch

Apples watchOS platform doesn’t have as many customization options as other smartwatches, such as those based on Google Wear OS, do. But there are many ways to make your Apple Watch yours, beyond the picking the color, size and strap of your watch. Here are the main features to know and how to use them.

The Watch app on your iPHone gives you a few customization options to get started. Tap Application view and you can choose between a grid and a list for your apps (displayed when you press the digital crown); with a grid, you can also press Arrangement so that all your apps are positioned exactly the way you want them.

Then there’s the dock, which you pull out by pressing the side button of your Apple Watch. This watch your most recent apps or up to 10 of your favorite apps. To tell your watch the apps to display, tap Dock in the Watch app for iOS, then 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).

Look at the faces

Apple has yet to open the doors to a community of third-party face developers, but there are a growing number of Apple-approved faces to choose from (for the Apple Watch series 4 and later, at least). To switch to a new watch face from your real watch, swipe your finger left or right on the current face to see your options.

If you’ve just set up your Apple Watch, you won’t have a lot of options. You can touch Newand Apple will present you with a selection of faces for your reading – slide your finger up or down on the screen to scroll through them. When you find something you like, tap a watch face to set it up (it will also be added to the quick pick list that appears when you swipe on the current watch face).

You may find it easier to set watch faces from your phone. If you open the Watch app, you can tap Faces gallery to see all available options. Here, you will not only see a choice of faces, but several variations of these faces. When you select one, you will be able to choose the colors it uses (if available) and the complications you will see. (again, if the watch face supports them).

Tap Add on a watch face and it is added to the My faces box on the My watch tab: press Edit to change the faces that appear in this list. This is the same list you will see if you swipe your finger across the face of your watch to see more options– it’s a good idea to store the faces you use most often here for easy access. Tap any of these preselected faces in the app on your phone to access the personalize screen, where you can also choose to Set as current watch face or Remove the watch face.

Once you have a few dials in the My faces gallery you can swipe the screen of your watch to switch between them. You have to press and hold if you want to share a watch face look that is particularly close to your heart, as this is where you will find the share button, in the lower left corner.

Watch the complications

Some watch faces have complications, which are small shortcuts leading to applications or features, or panels that show real time information. Again, you can edit these complications from your watch or phone. To do this on the mobile, long press the watch face, then choose Edit. You will see the color options first, then you can swipe left to see the complications options.

Touch one of the available complications to change it to something else, then scroll using the digital crown to make your selection. Your choice will depend on the type of complication and the apps you have installed. Make your selection, then double-tap the digital crown to return to the watch face display.

As with watch faces, it’s probably something that’s probably easier to set up from the Watch app on your iPhone. You can tap any face My faces or on the Faces gallery tab to access complications, which are then easy to scroll. Some watch faces will have more complications than others, and while you won’t be able to rearrange them on the screen, you can turn some off if you want.

If you feel like you need more complications to play, look for iPhone apps that also include decent Apple Watch apps and complications. You can have musical complications with Spotify, meteorological complications with Carrot weather, note the complications with Bear, and travel complications with Citymapper, 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 Watchmaker, which allows you to create complications covering weather, time and date, astronomy and more, and which also has options to change complications based on time.

Other modifications

There are several other ways to customize the look of what you see on your Apple Watch. If you choose Display and brightness from the Watch app on your iPhone, for example, you can adjust the screen brightness, turn the Still active turn the feature 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 completely personalize your Apple Watch is to set your own photo like the face of your watch. If you open the Photos app on your watch and then select an image and tap the small 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 essentially the idea behind Make also, which features custom designs created by other people – not third parties –party watch faces, but different history and combination of complications that people want to show. If a watch face that you select uses a complication from an app that you haven’t installed, you’ll be prompted to install it.

It also doesn’t take too much effort to create background images specifically for the Apple Watch in the preferred image editor of your choice. All you have to do is find your Apple Watch screen resolution and leave room for the digital clock face that Apple slaps on (if you choose a kaleidoscope effect, you get the hands. analog, but there is no way to choose Specifically).

Finally, it is also worth mentioning Apple Application of shortcuts. If you run the app on your smartwatch, You can then initiate compatible actions directly from your wrist, and even set them as complications on your watch faces. This is another way to create custom complications – in this case, you should run shortcuts that you find useful.