New GMT face

It’s actually an easy way to scroll the time in dozens of time zones with a single tap, but if battery life is your concern I don’t think there’s going to be a watch face that turns your Apple Watch into the perfect tool for your job — especially if battery life is your chief concern.

Just because I’m a space buff, tho’, it’s interesting to note that NASA did conduct a competition for a crowdsourced smartwatch app for astronauts. Here’s an image from the winning mockup:

This was years ago, of course, and I don’t know whether NASA has ever approved a smart watch for use in space — but it doesn’t seem like they’re against the idea.

(While we’re on the subject, NASA never selected a watch with a GMT face for a moon landing; they probably wouldn’t be much use on the International Space Station, either. Virtually all spacecraft operate on a single time zone — almost always either UTC or GPS Time.)

NASA has only officially approved the original Omega Speedmaster Professional manual wind mechanical chronograph "Moon Watch" that was worn on the surface of the moon during the Apollo missions, and the more modern (and commonly seen today on astronauts' wrists) Omega X-33. The X-33 is battery powered, but a watch battery that should last about 2 years, so not an issue even for astronauts. The X-33 has multiple time zones, GMT, mission timers, alarms, etc. Definitely not a smart watch like the Apple watch, but the Omegas can go out into space for an EVA while worn on the exterior of the spacesuit! Seems like the Apple watch would be really handy inside the ISS though, keeping you on task.

Speedmaster Professional "Moon Watch"

Speedmaster X-33

I have the Speedmaster "Moon Watch" but, sadly, never wear it now because I have come to rely on the Apple Watch's amazing array of health, communication, and life/work assistance features so much.

Yes indeed! It's great this thread has brought out fellow watch aficionados. I was a bit obsessed with Fortis 20 years ago and still have this Official Cosmonauts Automatic that came with a nice leather case with a rubber diving band and a large velcro band for wearing outside a spacesuit (you never know):

It is also just sitting in the safe thanks to Apple Watch 😂

A couple of comments that might be useful. First of all, while the red hand is only designed to give you a rough idea of what time it is, on the 24 hour dial, if you want to know the precise time just tap the watch, which brings up the interface to choose the time zone, but also shows the precise time in the selected time zone.

what I don’t understand, however, is the two colors on the dial. They don’t seem to correspond to anything. At one point, I thought they indicated sunrise and sunset, but if I change the outer dial time zone, then change it back to where I had it before, the covers have moved. Here’s a screenshot right now: I am in the UK, and I have the outer dial just sent to current location.

sunrise tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM. Looking at the cover dial, it suggests that sunrise is about 4:30 AM.

if I send it to UTC, which is an hour earlier, here’s what it displays:

So those colored sections really make no sense.

That is not normal, because on mine the colors perfectly correspond to the sunrise/sunset for my location if I set the outer bezel time zone to local. Also, I tried setting mine to London (I am in the US) and again the sunrise/sunset times for London, according to the Internet currently 7:29AM and 6:02 PM, matches the color change lines exactly, as you can see:

(by the way, my sunset in Utah, USA is 18:44 according to the complication in the upper right).

I leave my bezel timezone set to UTC so it is a GMT watch, and as you can see, it is properly an hour different from London (GMT+1) right now and showing the "sunrise/sunset" bands for UTC, even though that is technically not applicable for UTC as it is a timezone based on Greenwich mean time (GMT) without daylight savings time adjustments and used globally with various local sunrise sunset times it will not match:

I can't imagine why yours is behaving so differently. Maybe try rebooting the watch or resetting to factory defaults and setting up again.

Of course this works, but it’s only useful advice if you want to show 24-hour time on every one of your digital faces (and see your 7 p.m. appointments listed as 19:00, for example, in Calendar complications). If you swipe back and forth between watch faces frequently, it’s obviously too cumbersome to pull out your phone and adjust the Watch app’s Clock settings when you need to use a different face.

(I’d looked forward to the GMT face, assuming it would work like … well, almost any watch you’d find by googling “GMT bezel” — but having use 24-hour time in all contexts on all my faces is a deal-breaker for me, personally.)

I get the red hand, but not how the outer ring lines up. For instance I am on the West coast of the US. If I set the other time to NYC, which is 3 hours ahead, the midnight hour of the outer ring lines up with 10:30 on the inner ring. Why?

Here is another obvious error on the GMT face in my opinion: what should be 60 minute/second hash marks on the 12 hour inner dial are not, there are 120 of them, so they are pointless with respect to the minute and sweep seconds hands on the 12 hour dial which is where they appear. They are purposeless marks making 10 marks within every 5 minutes/5 seconds. So the minute and sweep seconds hands never line up with a specific minute/second, unless pointing to one of the 12 numerals. I can only guess the designer was trying to make them look aligned with the 24 hour marks on the outer GMT bezel, but for what purpose, they are on the 12 hour dial for the minutes and seconds hands! A complete error it seems, so now if the minute hand is ever pointing between two of the numerals, say 13 min after the hour, all you can visually see is that it looks to be about 12-14 ish minutes after, because none of the tiny 120 hash marks equates to one of the 60 minutes, until it lines up with the 3 numeral and then you can see it is exactly 15 after for a minute, lol. So annoying. Did no one really notice this in the design process? It seems like such an obvious mistake I wonder if it was intentional to make the design just different enough from a real GMT watch design (or really any real watch with a second and minute hand on a 12 hour dial) to help prevent any copyright infringement issues?? If not I hope Apple corrects this quickly.

Yes what wagonpilot said. The confusion lies in the fact that this does not act like a true gmt watch. The red hand should point to the 24hr indicator for the second time zone. With 12 being midnight and 6 being noon. The outer bezel should only rotate for a third time zone.

The minute hand is still the minute hand. It never changes. The red hand just becomes another hour hand for a different time zone. Unless of course you aren’t tracking a standard full hour deviation such as in  Newfoundland, India, Iran, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the Marquesas, as well as parts of Australia use half-hour deviations from standard time, and some nations, such as Nepal, and some provinces, such as the Chatham Islands of New Zealand, use quarter-hour deviations.

Maybe that’s an issue for someone with a lot more experience wearing a GMT watch. Personally, I’d just tap the Apple Watch face to bring up the complete list of time zones and check as many as I want — then tap the “X” to return to my face as I’d originally set it up. Maybe not useful for every use case, I guess.

I'm using the GMT face and I have 24 hour on the outer ring and 12 hour on the inner ring. I believe this is because I have set my watch default to 24 hour time. Try setting it to 24 hour time and you should see the 1-12 scale on the inner ring and will display your outer ring in 24 hour time. (If my theory is correct)

It is kind of a bummer though that Apple did not opt to use the graduated 24 hour outer ring like a real GMT analog watch. it just has tick marks and the time indicator is right next to the GMT hand... C'mon Apple! give it to us like a real watch!

I might be misunderstanding the issue, but it looks to me like the arrow on the ring is behaving the same way the arrow would on the rotating bezel of a GMT watch. (The arrow isn’t supposed to stay centralized at the top of the face; it’s offset to reflect the time zone you’ve set the red hand to read.)

I posted this link earlier in this thread, but I’m posting it again here in case it addresses your issue:

How to Read a GMT Watch:

youtu.be/n54Oab-tlls

Out of curiosity, are you using a Time Ahead setting for your local time? (On your watch, Settings ➡️ Clock ➡️ Set Watch Face Display Time Ahead.) or is your local time zone offset from UTC by something other than a round hour (like these https://www.timeanddate.com/time/time-zones-interesting.html)? I’m confused about why your LON time would be showing 36 minutes after the hour while your local time looks like ≈20-something after the hour.