How to love your Apple Watch
Some tips and ideas to make it yours and get the most out of it
Photo by Daniel Korpai
This article can also be read on Medium
Oh boy, the Apple Watch. The first product category created after Steve. The product that inspired my first Medium post. The second coming. The Watch. Well, after more than 3 years using it I can say one thing about it: don’t take it too seriously. Apple eventually learned not to and so should we. It’s not going to change your life or magically make you a better person. But with a few tips it could become a truly great addition to your digital life. In this article I’m going to cover:
Selection | Choosing the right model
Customisation | Making it work for you
Notifications | Reclaiming your attention
One More Thing| Mastering it with hidden tricks
1 | Choosing the right Watch for you
If you want to use it for anything other than checking the time, get the Series 3 or 4. It’s the best way to ensure fast performance and several years of endurance. But mostly performance, you want it to be fast, especially if you intend it to replace your iPhone for some tasks. If it’s not just as fast (or even faster) chances are you’ll stop using it.
If you want a durable, versatile watch and not just a sports accessory, get the stainless steel model. It’s pricier, sure, but it has many benefits. The aluminium model looks great at the gym but it falls short whenever you need to dress up, it’s just too matte. And while the sport bands look great in all models, the more elegant bands like the Leather Loop or the Buckle are made for the stainless steel watch. Oh and one more thing: the stainless steel model comes with a sapphire front and back, which means scratching your watch will be next to impossible.
If you’re serious about using your iPhone less or want to workout, get the cellular model. I know, cellular on a watch. Who’d want that right? I was the first one to think it was a silly gimmick when Apple introduced it in the Series 3, but ever since I started working out with just the watch I’ve seen the light. Not having your phone with you while you’re working out means no getting sucked into Instagram in between series, so you can truly focus on the task at hand. All you need are your AirPods, an Apple Music subscription and a great workout app like Gymaholic and you’re good to go.
Having said all of that (and forgive me for stating the obvious) but if you can afford it I highly recommend getting the Series 4. No matter the size you’ll get blazing performance and a bigger display without also getting a larger device, which is amazing. Having more room to see everything is truly nice and it’ll entice you to use more apps on the Watch instead of simply using it for the time and notifications. And you’ll have access to watch faces and complications that are simply not available in other models.
The new display and the Infograph face are reason enough to get the Series 4 (Photo by Oliur Rahman)
2 | Making the Watch truly yours
Simply buying an Apple Watch, strapping it to your wrist and then forgetting about it surely won’t be a bad experience, but if you really want to fall in love with the thing you’ll have to work a little harder to truly make it your Apple Watch.
Instant, easy customisation is one of the things that makes me love my watch the most. It’s amazing how quickly you can switch bands and completely change the look and feel of the watch. But the band is just a part of the look, what you see when you flick your wrist is the other. Having several watch faces for different bands or moments of the day is crucial to truly appreciate what makes the Watch so great.
From Monday to Friday I keep it practical: my band of choice is the Midnight Blue Sport Band, and my favourite watch face is the Infograph. With just one flick of the wrist I can see not just the date and time, but also my next reminder and event, the current temperature (including highest and lowest of the day) and how far I am in closing my rings. You can add even more complications but I find a super charged face to be more distracting than useful and less pleasing aesthetically.
Come the weekend I don’t usually need all that information, so I have a different version of the Infograph face ready right next to my weekly one. With just one swipe on Friday evening I turn my watch into something much more minimal and focused: time, date and the weather. If it’s a special occasion, or if I’m wearing my leather band, I have an even more minimal face ready to go: the Numerals face with the weather complication. Setting the accent colour to walnut really complements the brown leather strap.
From left to right: my workday face, my simplified face for weekends and the Numerals face for when I’m wearing the leather band
3 | Getting the right notifications
Whatever you do here let’s first get something out of the way first: be a decent human being and turn the sound off on your watch (swipe up from the watch face and tap the Chime button). Done? Good, let’s carry on. Now, never mind sections 1 and 2: if you don’t customise the notifications that come to your Watch chances are you won’t love it at all, more like utterly hate it.
By default, any app that can send a notification to your iPhone will instead ping your watch while your phone is locked. Yeah, ping. That’s a haptic vibration on your wrist and a sound. I don’t know about you, but according to Screen Time I get an average of 500 notifications per day. Imagine being tapped on the wrist just a fraction of those times. Foolproof way to go mental.
Ideally, the Apple Watch’s ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode should work like the iPhone’s: your notifications come through but you don’t get constantly notified, instead they’re sent straight to Notification Centre, where you can check them at your convenience. However that’s not the case: turning on ‘Do Not Disturb’ on the Watch completely turns notifications off and only shows them on your iPhone, defeating one of the main purposes of the watch (not having to check your phone so often).
That may change with the next version of watchOS, but right now there’s a little trick to achieve something similar: on your iPhone, go to Settings > Notifications, and going into whichever app you wish to customise, turn off the “Sound” slider. That way a notification from that app will still show up on your watch but without making any sound or vibration. I’ve done that for my main social apps (iMessage, Telegram, WhatsApp and Instagram).
Once you’ve done that, open the Watch app on your iPhone and tap on Notifications. My advice? Turn everything off except those apps for which you’ve previously turned “Sound” off, and those which you consider to be truly important, so much that they can tap you on the wrist. For me that’s Phone, Calendar, Reminders, Activity, Things and Uber. Period.
Photo: Daniel Korpai
4 | Becoming an Apple Watch master
Apart from everything I’ve mentioned above, there are some tips and tricks that really add to the experience of the watch. Nothing is “hidden”, sure, but it’s often forgotten and that’s a shame. Basically:
Siri. Despite the bigger display size and faster processor, interactions on the Watch are best if kept short. So if you can do something just by talking to it instead of tapping, do it that way. Siri used to be excruciatingly slow on the Watch, but on the Series 3 / 4 it’s almost as fast as on the iPhone, and since watchOS 5 you don’t even need to say “Hey Siri”, just bring up your watch to your mouth and give your command. Siri on the Watch is perfect to create reminders, activate HomeKit scenes and devices, playing music, starting a workout…
Apple Pay. Paying with your iPhone is nice, but with the Watch it’s just perfect. Since your watch is already on your wrist there’s no need to take your phone out of your bag or pocket; and since your cards are by default authenticated while you’re wearing it there’s no need for Face ID / Touch ID – just double click the side button, approach your wrist to the POS and boom, you’re ready to go.
App Switcher. Using more than two apps at once on the Series 0–2 was pretty much out of the question. Series 3 and 4 however can take pretty much any app you throw at them with ease, so you’ll probably find yourself even multitasking on the watch. If that’s the case, remember that double clicking the crown always takes you to the last app you used, and viceversa. For example I constantly use the shortcut while I’m at the gym using Gymaholic: double click to switch to the Music app, change a song, double click and I’m back in Gymaholic. Super nice.
Mac Unlock. If your Mac doesn’t have Touch ID, the best way to unlock it is with the watch. Set it up following these instructions and you’re good to go. Whenever you wake your Mac you’ll get a gentle tap on your wrist and boom, it’s unlocked.
