Every Apple Watch owner knows that the Watch Face is one of the most important parts of their wearable Apple gadget. It is crucial to the whole Watch experience, as it not only shows the user what matters the most in the form of the complications but also because it showcases the style and greatly affects the overall look of the device. To some their watch face is a way to give their watch a personality that matches their own.
With watchOS 3 and iOS 10’s new Watch app Apple has tried to improve the experience of creating and applying watch faces to Apple Watch better. I have been running iOS 10 and watchOS 3 betas on my devices from day 1, and have been playing around with the new way watchOS 3 brings to create and manage watch faces in addition to a few new faces that have been added in this release.
My first impressions after playing around with the betas have been fairly positive as the new watch face manager makes the job much easier for the user. Now you can create new Watch faces and add them to your Apple Watch right from the iPhone app. This means you can play around with different looks, colors and add complications in a much convenient way.
The first thing you see when you launch the Watch app in iOS 10 is the new ‘My Watch’ screen. There you can find the ‘My Faces‘ section that horizontally lists all the Watch faces that are already added on your device. You can scroll the list, tap on the one you want to use, customize it and apply it to your Watch by tapping on the ‘Set as current Watch Face’ button. All this can be done without even touching the Apple Watch. This in my opinion makes switching between Watch faces much faster than doing so directly on the Apple Watch, which is still an option if you prefer that.
You can also rearrange or remove faces from the Watch from ‘My Watch‘ page. Simply tap on the ‘Edit‘ button to get the list that allows you to do so.
Then there’s the new ‘Face Gallery‘ page that can be accessed from the button bar. Here you can find different variations of the Watch faces offered in watchOS 3 by default. For example, in watchOS 3 beta 1 that I have been using there are 9 different variations of the ‘Activity’ face. Even though all these faces are based on Activity face they vary a lot in terms of looks and details.
You can tap on these available options and on the next page find a description, color options, choose between different details and select complications that matter to you the most. Once you have edited the face you can hit the ‘Add’ button from the top to add it in your ‘My Faces’ section, which will make them appear on the ‘My Watch’ page as well as on the selection menu of Watch faces on the Apple Watch.
