The original, luxurious, $10,000 gold Apple Watch Edition has long been discontinued, but the popular Apple Watch has since become the company's most personalized product, with a lucrative market for watch bands and multiple colors for the aluminum and stainless steel cases allowing for nearly endless combinations of looks.
But what about the most decorative part of a watch: the watch face? While a digital screen can display anything, Apple severely limits the designs it offers. Luckily, third-party watch face apps give you a lot more ways to express your own style. The best part is that you don't need to hack or modify your watch to drastically expand your options.
read more: Apple Watch X: Everything we know about release date, rumors, leaks, and more
First, let's show you how to switch watch faces on your Apple Watch.
Apple's collection of watch faces includes dozens of designs and variations, ranging from minimalist analog faces reminiscent of real-world clocks to information-dense displays that pack as much data as possible into a small space. You can have up to 50 different faces, and easily switch between them by swiping from the left or right edge of your Apple Watch screen. (If that doesn't work, make sure you've updated to WatchOS 10.6; the initial 10.0 release removed this useful feature.)
There are two ways to add a watch face: using the watch itself or your iPhone.
About the watch:
- Touch and hold the clock face to bring up the selection interface. The face shrinks to make room for the name, share button, and edit button.
- Swipe left new Tap the screen + button.
- Scroll through the options. The options are listed alphabetically, so if you know which one you want, use the Digital Crown to quickly scroll through them alphabetically. Tap addition For what you want.
- Change the options for your watch face, such as the color or complications (features built into some watch faces).
- Press the Digital Crown to finish editing and activate the watch face.
On your iPhone:
- Open the Watch app and tap Face Gallery It's at the bottom.
- Select the face you want and set it.
- Tap addition button.
Custom faces are possible thanks to complementary complications
In traditional watchmaking, complications Besides the main clock hands, there are usually additional mechanisms such as an integrated stopwatch or a small clock that can be set to a different time zone to suit your jet-setting lifestyle.
On Apple Watch, complications are assigned a dedicated area and display information such as the current weather, activity rings, current compass direction, etc. Tapping a complication usually opens the associated app, such as Weather or Calendar.
Third-party developers have seized this opportunity to create their own complications to run in these spaces — in fact, the apps mentioned here provide a framework that allows anyone to create their own designs, resulting in hundreds of possibilities.
Some of the app's faces are free to use, but you'll need to sign up for a paid subscription to access most of the designs.
Transforming Complexity with Facer
Facer substitutes its own complications into Apple's existing faces – for example, the licensed Atari design is built on the Portraits face with its own imagery in the background – and many other faces take advantage of Apple's Modular faces and add custom designs and functionality to the complications.
Under the hood, the Facer app lives on your iPhone and communicates with a companion app on your Apple Watch that sets the watch face. To add a new watch face, follow these steps:
- Open Facer on your iPhone and tap the one you want to activate.
- Tap the blue “Add” button with a clock arrow icon. This will switch you to the Watch app.
- Tap Add to my face.
After a moment, the clock face will become active and load your custom complication.
Facer also has an app for Android smartwatches. Some watch faces, especially those that mimic luxury watches like MVMT's official design, are only available on circular Android models and won't appear on the Apple Watch.
Control the entire clock face with Clockology
Like Facer, the app Clockology includes faces that work with Apple's existing framework, though some of the faces use full-screen options that break the mold, albeit with some limitations.
Instead of forcing functionality onto an existing complication, Clockology's full-screen face takes over the entire watch. But wait, didn't we just say that WatchOS doesn't allow that?
Yes, but nothing stands in the way of Clockology Apps To get around the default clock (which is a separate clock app with special system permissions), Clockology runs as the frontmost app, meaning that it runs another app on top of the clock app that also happens to be a clock.
Installing a face in Clockology is similar to Facer's approach.
- Open the Clockology app on your iPhone and tap the design you want to add.
- Make sure the Clockology app is open on your watch.
- Tap Synchronization iPhone button.
To stop the regular watch app from launching every time you lower your wrist, you need to change an important setting. On your Apple Watch or in the Watch app on your iPhone, Go back to Settings > General > Clock Select 1 hour laterThis will make the last app you had open active. If you don't check the clock or wake it up in any way after an hour, the Clock app will be brought to the foreground. Open Clockology to start a timer and keep it prominent. Double-press the Digital Crown to see your recent apps, then tap Clockology.
Consider these tradeoffs when changing your watch face
While the novelty of running a new watch face won't wear off anytime soon, you should be aware of the downsides to using an alternative watch face: You're sacrificing some functionality in exchange for changing the look of your Apple Watch.
For any watch face that creates a custom complication, tapping on that watch face will take you to the Facer or Clockology app instead of the underlying data source like Weather or Heart Rate. This means you won't be able to use quick access tools like a timer app. However, once you've installed the watch face, you can replace any of the complications with complications from other apps.
Most of Clockology's full-screen faces aren't interactive at all. They display information in various ways, such as battery level or steps taken for the day, but tapping the face doesn't reveal any further data. The exceptions are a few Clockology faces that include a button layer that changes what is displayed when tapped. Also, the notification indicator (the red dot at the top of the screen) isn't visible when a full-screen face is active.
One minor annoyance: pressing the Digital Crown normally brings up the app list, but if you have the Clockology app running, pressing it again brings up the clock app.
Even in the face of competition from Android smartwatches, smart rings and other devices, the Apple Watch remains a constant companion for millions of people. From finding new uses for old timepieces to discovering hidden gems in the App Store, the watch has proven to be more than just a watch. And now, even its most important functions can be customized in more ways than ever before.