Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Apple Watch Series 9: Tips and Hidden Features”.
There’S an Apple Watch on your wrist and you want to make the most out of it. You’Ve come to the right place as I’ve put together. Some tips, secrets and not so secret features to check out whether you have a series 9, an Ultra 2 or an earli Apple Watch. Most of these tips will apply as long as your watch is running watch OS 10. That is any Apple watch from the series. 4 and later, okay, let’s go when you scroll the crown or swipe up from the watch face it’s now going to show the smile stack, so you can do things like pinning widgets to the top. So it’s always going to show the things that you want to see: first, just press and hold and then tap that pin icon.
So it appears at the top. But one customization that I find super helpful is to actually have a battery widget. So I can see how much power I have left without needing to go to the control center, so on this tile with the three circles we’re going to need to press and hold and then I’m just going to remove one of those ones.
That’S existing there press the plus icon and then find this battery icon right here and hit done and there’s my battery percentage double tap. Is that gesture that lets you do this to control the series 9 and Ultra 2? Now it works with lots of first party apps like messages timers and music, but some third-party messaging apps will also work. So, for example, if I get a slack notification, I’ll just need to raise my wrist double tap and it’s going to bring up the same voice.
Detex dictation, as the first party app now, you can also customize double Taps, so the gesture SK tracks, rather than play, pause when you’re listening in the first party, music, app so we’ll need to go down to settings, then gestures go into double tap and then change That play pause, which is on by default, to skip, but I already changed it because there’s two types of people in the world: the play, pause, people and the skip people and I’m definitely number two. And while we’re talking music, not exactly hidden but definitely not very well known, the series 9 and Ultra 2 actually come with double the storage of earlier Apple watches, that’s 64 GB, and that means you can put a lot of music on this. So you’re used to be able to do this to swipe back and forth between the different clock faces that you chose on the Apple watch, but that was actually disabled in the first editions of watch OS 10. Fortunately, you can get it back with the latest update to 10.2 you’ll just need to go to settings, then clock and then swipe to switch watch face, while you’re here check out some other useful things like being able to set your clock ahead. A couple of minutes, which is really really helpful if you are always running late and an oldie budy goodie, is actually taptic time. So if you’re stuck at the movies or in a meeting any situation where you can’t really look at your watch face, you can actually press and hold on the watch with two fingers to be able to have the time buzzed on your wrist. If you’re a cyclist, your iPhone can act as a bike. Computer just start an indoor or outdoor cycling, workout from the watch and then on your iPhone.
You will see this activity popup on your screen like so tap it and then you’ll see all of your workout metrics front and center on the big screen. So you can put your phone on the handlebars and ride a bit safer. Another super helpful tool for cyclists is connecting a Bluetooth accessory like power, meter, pedals or a Cadence Sensor to your watch, go to settings Bluetooth and then scroll down to health devices tap on your device and, depending on what you connect. You’Ll now see metrics like Cadence and speed, plus your functional threshold power, which is the maximum amount of intensity.
You can maintain for an hour. You probably know you can open the control center tap this icon and it will ping your phone if it’s within Bluetooth range, but press and hold it and your flashlight will go off if your phone is locked. But if you have the watch paired to an iPhone 15, it’s going to use Precision finding to locate your phone, so you can see just how far away it is. You can also ping your watch from your phone.
Go to settings control center, then add ping. My watch swipe to open the control center and tap if you misplace your phone. A lot turn on notify when left behind, just open up, find my on the iPhone then go to devices tap the name of your phone and then make sure notify when left behind is turned on. So if you leave your phone behind and walk away with the watch, it will give you a notification on your wrist all right, Voice. Assistant time I won’t say the name of it.
So I don’t accidentally start your two tips specifically for the series 9 and the ultra 2, so it now works offline. So you don’t need to be connected to do things like start a workout or set a timer start, a workout starting your workout and number two. You can now ask for Health Data from the watch, so there’s no more digging through that awkward Health app on your phone things like what’s my blood oxygen as of 6:04 a.m.
it was 97 % or how many steps did I take today, you’ve taken 4,720 steps Today, you can also log Health Data like record my blood pressure as 120 over 76 done and things like my body. Temperature is 98.6 de done. But to get this, you do need to turn on Health Access First on both your phone and your watch. So, first pull out your iPhone, go into settings, go down to health and then find data access and devices find your voice assistant. The name starts with s. I am not going to say it to not accidentally start yours and then make sure this Access, Health Data toggle is turned on now. That’S activated. Let’S switch to the watch.
Go to settings then find Health, then apps and services. Again, The Voice Assistant start starting with s and Access Health Data, make sure that one is switched on as well and for this all to work. You’Ll also need to be running iOS 17.2 on the phone and watch OS 10.2 or later on. The watch and here’s a fun bonus trick that works on all Apple watches, so you can turn on the flashlight with just your voice, without saying that whole phrase, like turn on the flashlight just say: lumos it’s on now or flashlight, it’s on now and turn it Off nox, it’s off now, you might already know that you can use the watch as a remote for your phone’s camera, but you can also control your Apple TV from your wrist, find the remote app and then select your device and swipe or tap to control it.
Just make sure that you’re on the same Wi-Fi network as the Apple TV and bonus, it also works with Roku. You just need to download the Roku app on your iPhone first and then on the watch. It should automatically install open it up and voila the same control options. That’S pretty neat.
Launching a shortcut from the clock face is one of my favorite things to do, and it’s so customizable, so we’re going to grab our iPhones and open up the shortcuts app to create almost any sequence of actions that you possibly could want. One of my favorites is to navigate home from wherever I am so. Let’S go make that one all right. First, I’m going to hit the plus icon at the top right hand corner to create a new shortcut.
Then I am going to go to the apps and actions setting once I swipe up from the bottom here to find maps, because that’s how I want to navigate then within this menu, I am going to say, open directions. Then it’s going to say open driving directions from my current location to whatever destination I choose using maps and you can change driving to anything like walking, biking or Transit, which is kind of cool if you’re not always in the car. So I want to set driving directions from my current location to home. So for obvious reasons, I’m not going to show you where I live.
So, let’s just pretend I live in the park. Okay hit Golden Gate Park, we pit done and there you have. My shortcut is all created now before we exit out of this make sure we tap that I icon at the bottom of the screen and then show on Apple watch, very, very important, activate that hit done.
I’M going to give my shortcut a snazzy new name. Let’S rename that to go home, hit done shortcut created to the watch. So now I’m on my watch, I’m going to choose a spare complication slot and put the shortcut on that so complications. Let’S take out the compass we’re going to scroll down until we find shortcuts there we go now. We should be able to see a selection of the shortcuts that I’ve created and go home.
The one that I just made is right here: tap that go back into the watch face hit that hit run. I got directions from wherever I am back home. I love this shortcut if you have a series 8 or later with a temperature sensor, and you track your sleep, the health app will chart your temperature variations over time, but it’s not giving you the exact numbers. So if you are curious about what that temperature readout actually is just go to settings, then Health, then Health, Data body, measurements, wrist temperature and again you can see the exact readings of your wrist temperature as it was tracking your sleep in a nice list. No more weird chart there’s so many more cool things you can do on the Apple watch and this just scratches the surface. If you do want some extra tips, please drop me a comment down below and if you already knew these, you get a gold star and may your watch be blessed with extra battery life. See you .