After WatchOS 10 update I cannot swipe between watch faces

Yes, it’s a pretty poor implementation of a new philosophy, and , as I’ve said in an earlier post , these issues were raised in the Beta.

7 Widgets is nowhere near enough and only one widget with only 3 complications won’t do.— if the new focus is a minimal number of faces, or using a face with only one or two complications. And where’s the communication widget for email, messages & phone? MIA?

I’ve yet to see much “smartness” in the machine learning that manages the Smart Stack.

And why the OS9 way of swiping between faces was hobbled in OS10 is beyond me.

All we can do, as Bob Harris says, is bang away on the Apple Feedback system.

Tdurmusoglu wrote:

This is a very bad interface “improvement” decision. Easy swipe between watch faces was something I had used all the time. They were like different desktops for me, for different complications. I used to have 2-3 different versions of my favorite watch face with different complications, and even when walking my two dogs, it was an incredibly easy way to access any app I want. Neither the new widget feature, nor the new app layout is close to that experience. Please bring it back, at least as on option. If it ain’t broken…

Tell Apple:

Product Feedback - Apple

The app layout hasn't changed on my Watch.

kozmokramerkaplan wrote:

Bad move on Apples part. Being able to change watch faces on the for different purposes was a huge benefit. not sure what they were thinking here.

This link is probably the best explanation of the thinking behind WatchOS 10 . It seems Apple were trying to figure out a better way to display info/data than swiping between multiple faces each with multiple complications.

Unfortunately it reads well, works lousy (in my opinion)

Introducing watchOS 10, a milestone update for Apple Watch - Apple (NZ)

IdrisSeabright wrote:

There is a certain beauty in simplicity.

Personally, I'd be fine if Apple made this an option, but we all know how Apple feels about too many options.

Looking over recent posts….. users bemoan the loss of swiping between faces, but hardly anyone expresses dissatisfaction with the new navigation.

I suspect Apple won’t take much notice of complaining about the loss of an OS9 navigation and wanting swiping between faces back as an option.

I know it’s early days for the New Design Language & Navigation but it doesn’t work nearly as well as the Press Release implied; widgets/Smart Stack is simply not fit for purpose.

Here's the Press Release:

Introducing watchOS 10, a milestone update for Apple Watch - Apple (NZ)

Perhaps we should focus our attention on where we’re going, not where we have been. Here:

Product Feedback - Apple

500gramos wrote:

I can’t believe they haven’t fixed this yet. We need multiple screens!

Changing Apple Watch face

Change the watch face on your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Other watchOS 10 UI changes can be found here:

What’s new in Apple Watch and watchOS 10 - Apple Support

Please send feedback to Apple at

Feedback - Watch - Apple

The more users that send feedback, the more likely it will be seen by a decision maker.

Long press face then swipe to faces.

This was an intentional change in watchOS 10. There is no way to bring it back.

Major bummer, yes! I updated to 10 last night and was also shocked to find I had to long press, swipe and click to get to my other watch faces. Watch faces are my preselected groups of complications that I use throughout the day for different events and times of the day. A simple fun swipe that was replaced by multiple gyrations that will eventually drive me mad!!

i left feedback (10 is not there yet so I left the OS blank), they need to change this.

Feedback - Watch - Apple

By no longer swiping to other watch faces It looks like Apple is pushing us towards using the new Smart Stack….. all part of the “information at a glance” in the New Design Language as espoused by Kevin Lynch in the June preview of Watch os10.

Customize the watch face - Apple Support

It includes how to switch watch faces.

Send feedback to Apple, otherwise this is not going to change. It will take a lot of users sending feedback to make an impact

https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch

I'm Italian, there are no articles on this problem yet. This choice, which penalizes the most aware users of the watch, is inconceivable. Was it difficult to include a "no swipe" function for those who were bothered by it? now I will write in Italian for those like me who are looking for information:

si, purtroppo l'aggiornamento di apple watch 10 non consente di scorrere fra i diversi quadranti (no swipe) *** il gesto ormai familiare del che scivola sullo schermo. Lo hanno fatto per coloro che temevano lo swipe accidentale fra quadranti. Speriamo che Apple ci ripensi e che reintroduca una funzione fondamentale! Per cambiare schermo occorre premere e attendere che si apra la galleria di quadranti….

Lalimc wrote:

It's not that easy. If they want to make it an option, lovely, but for those of us who literally never had an issue with accidental swiping, this is a downgrade. I can no longer do switch faces while moving which i find very, very annoying.

Send your feedback to:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch

Did you know that when you are chronically ill or disabled, airlines don’t give you extra luggage? It doesn’t matter that half your suitcase is filled with medical equipment or meds.

this is like that. Don’t you think I’d also liked to use the stack for other things? But no, now I need to use it for this because a perfectly good gesture was disabled for no reason at all.

also- swipe up, here is what I see:

half the screen is wasted with info I already knew- the time and date.

this is already a terrible design choice as now, I see far less info on only half the screen.

But it gets worse cos you get one guess as to what I often do when I need this feature-

yeah, listen to music or podcast or so. Now that simple swipe is wasted on an entire screen of info I already knew. Hi there, it’s this time and date (the lunacy of putting this info on the feature that comes up when you’re swiping away from a watch face which usually contains that very info is stifling) and you’re playing this song.. yeah I knew all of that.

at that point you now require fine motor skills to swipe up to the other stacks- it can no longer be accomplished with a blind drag of a shaky finger. It often doesn’t even want to accept a swipe from the edge- you need to TARGET a stack and pull up on that by a precise amount. If you pull too far you skip over what you needed. Not to mention that the info is too small.

do you see how this turns what was a blind finger swipe and a glance while walking or running into stopping, properly pulling up sleeve, and having to make precise finger movements?

Apple is usually very good about accessibility and I can only assume that they snuck this one past the accessibility team because it’s blindingly obvious that this is absolute torture for anyone with motor skill issues. Plus lots of folks are complaining so it seems it’s not just that.

edit- I’d suggest re-enable the left and right swiping via a toggle so ppl can choose. Then, alow ppl go fill those slots with either watch faces, or a set of stacks. That way I can access the watch faces already set up, and can use the stacks without needing finger precision.

This. Same. It's absolutely an accessibility issue. It should be an option to enable or disable swiping between faces. This has made it so that if my funky heart does its thing, it is difficult for me to access the watch face I need.

So now instead of what I wanted to do today, I had to contact support and tell several different people about how this was actually a necessary feature and no stacks doesn't fix it, I was sent to the store, but they couldn't revert the OS and told me "you can forget about it", so then I called back, now they're going to check into if I can send it in to get it reverted. If I can do that, I'll revert to OS9. They don't know yet if that'll be possible, but I encourage anyone who wishes to contact their nearest apple store and ask for this- even if they can't, at least it'll register somewhere that people wanted to.

It's simply not okay to not think of accessibility to this degree. It's like someone sat down and said "hmm.. how can we make this worse for people with fine motor and/or visual deficits? Should we put an option in the acessibility settings? Nah, what would be the fun in that... now, how can we make the same information take more swipes and more button presses to access?"

It's not even internally consistent. Control panel and previous apps are accessible on a phone without having to push buttons.

Speaking of accessibility, the weather app now has terrible visual contrast. Used to be, you hit the weather complication and you'd see the forecast for the day. Now you just see the same number in bigger. Now you have to do an extra swipe to see the day's forecast- that's annoying but tolerable- but the thing itself is now a low-contrast soup of background colors. Accessibility has an option to increase contrast, but it does nothing for this. The OS9 weather was, admittedly, kind of sparse, but the numbers were white on black, super easy to see and showed off the brilliant screen. Now you can barely make out the numbers.

How are these developers viewing their watches? Do they have the watch mounted up on their desks at eye level? The rest of us are using this thing while walking and moving and holding stuff in our hands, or while *gasp* chronically ill or disabled. It needs to work with imprecise hand movements, it needs to show the most information possible per user input. That is a difficult task, yes, i'm not expecting miracles. But they made it so much worse.

Everyone - please take 1 minute to let Apple know this needs to be changed IMMEDIATELY. Here is the official feedback link: http://Apple.com/feedback

They are telling support reps that we (end users) simply need to get used to the design change. That’s a no-go for me.

Please change it back or at least make it option. We don’t have time for this…many of us use that feature daily (hourly) and the difference in ease of use is mind-boggling!