watchOS 10 Brings Widgets Back to the Apple Watch
The arrival of watchOS 10 may bring about a significant change in the appearance of your Apple Watch. The company is set to revamp the smartwatch user interface, which is expected to be one of the firmware’s most substantial updates.
You may recall that the original Apple Watch interface was designed in part around Glances—a collection of widgets for various apps and features. Apple eventually moved away from Glances to put more emphasis on apps, but now the company wants to make widgets an even bigger focus of the Watch interface.
It appears to work similarly to the Siri watch face that has been available on the Apple Watch for some time. However, this experience is now available for all watch faces. You can rotate the Digital Crown to access a smart stack of related widgets. Timers, stopwatches and podcasts appear as widgets when enabled. You also get a widget that includes your favorite complications.
Shortcuts will soon be in the corner of the Activity app. You can view more information by turning the crown. The World Clock application has also been updated. It has dynamic background colors to help reflect the time of day in different time zones, which can be useful when you have friends, family, or colleagues around the world.
WatchOS 10 has two new watch faces. Another one is called Palette and shows the time in a colorful style. The reverse features Snoopy and Woodstock.
Cyclists can be happy with future updates to WatchOS 10. You can connect to the bikes Bluetooth sensors and view power and heart rate data during cycling sessions. Your watch can also estimate the intensity of your activity threshold. A cycling activity with routes automatically displayed on your iPhone.
The Compass application is also updated, as it automatically creates two new waypoints. The first drops a pin at the estimated location of where you last had cellular connection, which is useful when you’re out and about and need to make a call or see your messages. Similarly, your watch can set a waypoint for the last emergency call. This shows roughly where you have access to almost any carrier’s network so you can make an emergency call if needed. The new elevation display uses altimeter data to create a 3D view of the stored coordinates, while those in the US have access to a topographic map. You can search for nearby trails and trails and view information such as trail length, type, and difficulty level.
Mindfulness includes a feature that allows you to record your feelings and mood by turning the Digital Crown. Apple says users can “swipe through engaging multi-dimensional shapes to choose what they feel, choose what affects them the most, and describe how they feel.” With the Health app on iPhone and iPad, you get access to insights that help you infer factors that affect your mental health, Apple says. The Apple Watch will also soon have a feature that can track the time the wearer spends outdoors to reduce the risk of nearsightedness.
Elsewhere, you can watch a FaceTime video message on your watch and join Group FaceTime audio. The Medicines app can send additional reminders if you don’t say you took your medicine within 30 minutes of the specified time.
With Apple Fitness+, you’ll soon have a personalized exercise or meditation schedule that fits your needs. Stacks is a feature that is essentially an Apple Fitness+ playlist. You can use it to target multiple exercises and meditations that you can perform in sequence. Additionally, there is a feature called Voice Focus that allows you to increase the volume of the coaches’ voice or music.
In addition to all this, Apple is making some changes to the physical controls. Pressing the side button opens the Control Center at any time. Double-press the Digital Crown to return to recently used apps.
Developers can access the watchOS 10 beta starting today, with the public beta arriving next month. Apple will release watchOS 10 publicly this fall. You need an Apple Watch Series 4 or later to use the new version of the operating system.
