The Unofficial Guide to Using Apple Watch (5 page)

Bring out your inner scientist with this app, which displays the sun’s position in the sky.

Utility

A very basic and classic looking face; the following features can be changed: the color of the second hand and the numbering on the dial. The following can be added to the face: date, calendar, moon phase, sunrise / sunset, weather, activity summary, alarm, timer, stopwatch, batter charge, world clock, stock.

X-Large

X-Large is the most simplistic modern face—it’s also the boldest looking. The following can be adjusted: color.

Notifications are things that an app will send to keep you informed. They can be everything from meeting invites to exercise reminders—there’s dozens of different ones. When you get a notification, it is displayed on your watch; if you don’t read it right away, it’s saved so you can refer back to it later.

If you find that you are getting far too many notifications, you can adjust it by going to the Settings app on your iPhone, then selecting Notifications. You’ll see all of the apps with notifications and you can turn off the ones that you do not want.

If you want notifications, but you don’t want them to make a sound, then swipe up from your watch face to go to Glances; next, go to the Settings glance, and tap Silent Mode. You’ll still feel a tap, but you won’t hear a noise. If you don’t want the tap either, then turn on Do Not Disturb.

If you don’t respond to a notification right away, then a red dot will appear at the top of your watch face. Swipe down from the watch face to read it.

If you want to delete a notification, swipe the notification to the left and then tap Clear. To clear all notifications, then tap firmly on the display and then clear all.

To begin a new message, go to your watch’s home screen by pressing the knob, tap the Message icon, and press and hold your finger firmly on the screen. After three seconds it will ask if you’d like to start a new message. From here, tap the “Add a contact”; once you pick your contact, tap “Create message.”

When you receive a message, Apple Watch will tap you. Move your hand toward you and the message will appear automatically; once you put your hand down, it turns off again. Use the watch’s side knob to scroll through the message. The reply is at the bottom of the message. Note: there's no on-screen keyboard on the Apple Watch. How do you reply? There are a couple of ways.

One:

Emojis. You may know emojis as cute little smiley faces. On Apple Watch, these faces become animated. To get started, tap Reply, and then hit the Emoji button (the smiley face button). An animated face will appear; you can change how it looks, by moving the side knob up and down. You can also pick different gestures, by swiping across the emoji (the first you will see is a heart). When you find the one you want, tap Send.

Two:

Dictation. If you’d like to send an audio message or speak your reply, then tap Reply on the message, and then tap the microphone icon. Begin speaking into the watch (note: you’ll notice audio waves on the screen). When you finish, tap Done. It will ask if you want to send it as an audio reply (so the person has to listen to it) or as a text reply (so the person can see it). You can also cancel the message and start a new one.

Three:

Smart replies. Apple Watch automatically detects what your message is and will try to have a generic reply that you can use to reply. Use the knob to scroll through auto replies and tap to select the reply.

If no reply is needed, then hit the Dismiss button instead of the Reply button.

If you are not getting messages on your watch, then chances are a Setting is not enabled; you can change the Message setting from the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.

When you get mail, you’ll also get a notification; but there’s also an app for reading and managing your email. As it is on the iPhone, the email app is simply named “Mail.”

To start, go to the app on your home screen and tap on it. It looks pretty bare bones, but there’s a lot to it. You can scroll through your messages from within the app. To read a message, tap it.

At any time, you can continue reading the message on your iPhone, by swiping up on the Mail icon in the lower left corner of your iPhone’s lock screen (Note: handoff does need to be set up, so refer to how to set up handoff in this book if you haven’t already).

While Apple Watch does support HTML formats (including different fonts and font colors), it still might look a little off, so for a complex message, the iPhone is the best place to read them.

If it’s a long message, you can use the Digital Crown knob to scroll through it.

When a message includes phone numbers or address, the watch will automatically recognize it and turn it into a hyperlink. Tapping on them will either bring up the Phone or Map app (depending on what the hyperlink is).

To reply to a message, you will need to use the iPhone to compose it.

Flag an Email

When you are reading an email on the watch, you can press firmly on the display, and then tap Flag. You can also flag a message from your message list by swiping the message to the left, then tapping on More.

Mark as Unread

If you want to mark a message as unread, go to your message list, swipe left, tap More, and then tap Unread.

Delete an Email

If you want to delete a message, go to your message list, swipe left, tap More, and then tap Trash. (Note: if your email is set up to archive a message, then you’ll see the Archive button instead of the Trash button.)

Selecting the Inboxes that Appear

You may not want all of your mail to appear on your phone. Let’s say you have a work email, family email, and spam email, and you only want your family email to appear. If that’s the case then go to the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, tap My Watch, and then go to Mail and Include Mail. Specify which mailbox you do or do not want to appear.

Customize Alerts

If you want to change how you are alerted when you get mail (or if you don’t want alerts at all), then go to the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, and tap My Watch, then turn on Mail Alerts and Show Alerts. Sound would be alerts that make noises and Haptic is alerts that vibrate.

Message List

If you find your email message list is simply too long, you can reduce the number of lines of the preview by going to the Apple Watch app, tapping on My Watch and then going to Mail and Message Preview; pick 2 lines of message, 1 line of message or no lines of a message.

Digital touch lets you talk to people in a more personal way—it’s like a text message…without the message. Instead of saying hi to a person in a message, you can send them your heartbeat, draw them a picture, or tap them.

Pressing the side button on your watch will always take you to your friend’s page. The friend’s page is all the people that you connect with most. You can add more friends from your iPhone. You can scroll through your friends, by using the knob.

If your friend has an Apple Watch as well, then you’ll see a finger under their image when you open their detail page. Tapping the finger will open up the Digital Touch option.

The first thing you see when you hit the digital touch option is a blank screen. Moving your finger across the blank screen lets you sketch an image.

You can also tap your finger on the screen; this sends taps to your friend’s watch—so, for instance, if you wanted to wake someone up with a watch at a meeting, you could tap your finger ten times; when the messages comes to them, they will feel ten taps on their wrist. They will also feel the patter of the tap; so, for instance, you tapped in the top corner and bottom corner, those are the areas the tap will appear.

Finally, resting two fingers on your screen firmly will send your friend the most intimate message: your heartbeat.

If you love Siri on the iPhone, you’re going to love her even more on your wrist. Don’t love her? Give her a second chance because she got a little bit of an upgrade.

You can access Siri one of two ways (you’ll quickly discover that there are multiple ways to do most tasks on the watch):

1. Press the Digital Crown knob.
   
2. Raise your wrist and say, “Hey, Siri” then say your request (e.g. “Hey, Siri: what’s the weather in Paris?” “Hey, Siri: Who won last night’s Yankee game?”); you can use Siri to open apps, set alarms, call friends—pretty much anything you can think of. With no on-board keyboard, Siri is more important than ever.