The first thing you see what you lift up your Apple Watch is the watch face. It’s the gateway to everything on your Apple Watch. Did you know that there are now more than a dozen different watch faces on the Apple Watch? Everything from a modular, utilitarian watch face to something that’s minimal or just plain fun. Depending on your needs, you can customize your watch faces. And you can have multiple watch faces that you can switch between with just a swipe!
Related: How to Speed Up Your Slow Apple Watch
How to Switch Between Watch Faces on Apple Watch
If you’re running the latest version of watchOS, this is incredibly simple. Just swipe from left edge of the screen to the right. Start swiping from the edge of the Apple Watch, not the screen itself. You’ve just switched to the next watch face. Do this in the other direction to go back.
If you want to quickly swipe through all your watch faces, tap and hold on the watch face till you enter the editing menu. Now you can just swipe with one finger, in the left or right direction to view all the available watch faces. Tap on a watch face to choose it as your default watch face.
How to Add a New Watch Face
Apple Watch comes with a more than a dozen watch faces and new ones are added every year. Plus, if you buy the Nike Edition or the Hermes edition, you get extra watch faces.
But when you first set up your Apple Watch, you won’t see any of them.
To add a new watch face, tap and hold on the watch face to enter the editing mode.
Then swipe left to get to the end of the available watch faces. Here you’ll see a New button. Tap on it and you’ll see a vertically scrolling list of all available watch faces.
Use the Digital Crown or swipe with your finger to preview all watch faces. See something you like? Just tap on it. The watch face will be added to your carousel and it will become the active watch face as well. You can add as many watch faces as you want. You can have multiple instances of the same watch face, customized differently (we’ll get to that in the next section).
If you find the Apple Watch screen too small for this interaction, you can use the Watch app to add a new watch face as well. Open the Watch app, go to the Face Gallery section and swipe through all available watch faces. Tap on the one you like and tap on the Add button.
How to Customize Watch Faces on Apple Watch
Now that you’ve added a new watch face, it’s time to make it your own. A majority of watch faces come with customizable complications (fancy watch name for widgets). You can change any widget that’s in the corner of the watch face. And in the Modular watch face, you can change everything other than the time (this gives you 5 different widgets to play with).
You can put a lot of stuff here. It can be a widget from a third party app for weather, calendar appointment or fitness tracker. It can be a shortcut to an app you use frequently, like the Workouts app.
On your Apple Watch, tap and hold on the watch face and select the Customize button. You’re now in the editing mode.
In the first section, you’ll be able to customize the look of the watch face. Here, you can change the accent colors or edit the part of the watch face.
Swipe over to the last section and here you can change all your complications. Tap on a complication and use the Digital Crown to switch between the available options. Once you’re done, press the Digital Crown and you’re done.
If you find the Apple Watch UI cumbersome, you can add and edit watch faces from the Watch app on your iPhone as well.
From Face Gallery, select a watch face you want. Swipe down and you’ll be able to change the style, accent colors and complications from here easily.
Your Watch Faces
What kind of watch faces have you created on your Apple Watch? Do you have multiple watch faces that you switch between depending on the time and the day? Share with us in the comments below.
