Start With These 9 Essential Apple Watch Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Smartwatch
The article highlights nine essential tips for maximizing the use of an Apple Watch, particularly with the latest WatchOS 26 update. It covers features like swiping between watch faces, monitoring health metrics through the Vitals app, and using the new Wrist Flick gesture for navigation. These tips aim to enhance user experience by improving convenience, health tracking, and efficiency.
- ▪Users can re-enable swipe navigation between watch faces in WatchOS 10.2 and later by enabling 'Swipe to Switch Watch Face' in Settings > Clock.
- ▪The Vitals app tracks overnight health data such as heart rate, respiration, body temperature, and sleep duration, establishing a personal baseline to flag atypical readings.
- ▪On newer Apple Watch models in the US, blood oxygen data is processed on the iPhone due to an intellectual property dispute and does not appear in the Vitals app.
- ▪The Sleep Score feature provides a 0–100 rating based on sleep duration, bedtime consistency, and nighttime wake-ups to help users improve sleep quality.
- ▪Wrist Flick is a new gesture on Apple Watch Series 9 and later models that dismisses notifications or returns to the watch face with a quick wrist motion.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
It's easy to rely on a few core Apple Watch features and forget about everything else it can do. Checking notifications and screening calls has become second nature to me, but improvements in WatchOS 26 convinced me to take another look at how the smartwatch can help me every day. Whether you've bought a new Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch SE 3 or Apple Watch Ultra 3, or if you have an older watch that can run WatchOS 26, I recommend checking out these nine features to really take advantage of your intelligent timepiece. Swipe between watch faces (again) Until WatchOS 10.0, you could swipe from the left or right edge of the screen to switch active watch faces, a great way to quickly go from an elegant workday face to an exercise-focused one, for example.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at CNET.