Thursday, July 16, 2015

Apple Watch Tips and Tricks

Here are some quick tips that I have found helpful regarding the Apple Watch.


  • The first thing I did was turn on Silence Mode.  On the Apple Watch just swipe up to view glances and then swipe to the leftmost glance and tap on the Bell icon.
  • Turn on the Prominent Haptic feedback which will give you a strong tap before most notifications are displayed.  Using the Apple Watch app on the iPhone go to My Watch > Sounds and Haptic and toggle the Prominent Haptic switch.  Turn up the Haptic Strength while you are in there.
  • Turn on Bold Text, this will make it easier to read some stuff. Using the Apple Watch app on the iPhone go to My Watch > General > Accessibility.  Toggle the Bold Text option.  I don't like a lot of motion or transparency so you might want to turn that off while you are in there too.
  • Enable Apple Pay.  Using the Apple Watch app on the iPhone go to My Watch > Passbook & Apple Pay to add any credit or debit cards you have.
  • Remove any Watch faces you don't like.  After a couple weeks of use I found I only used three of the watch faces, so I deleted all the other watch faces so it was easier to switch.  From the watch face do a Force Touch and then swipe up on the watch faces you don't want to delete them.  You can always add them back by using the "New" face functionality, which is the last face on the right.
  • Try using Force Touch all over the place because you never know when some secret options or features will show up.  For example, doing a Force Touch on the notifications screen will allow you to clear all notifications at once.
  • If your digital crown gets hard to spin it is probably because some dirt or sand has managed to muck it up.  The quick fix is to go to the sink, turn on a slow stream of warm water, place the crown under the water and spin it back and forth for about 10-15 seconds.  Afterwards dry it off and it will be spinning like new.