My watch is Series 6
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iPhone 6, iOS 12
I sympathize with the person who said Apple deleted the "entire user experience," even though that is overstatement. Swiping between faces is an extremely central part of the user experience. My watch is actually five neighbopring watch faces. The center one is simple with no complications and probably color coordinated with the band. The two off to each side are information rich. Full of those ugly info-speedometers and such. I keep these busy looking screens out of sight. Where once I needed only to swipe, read, and swipe back, now to check the air quality, I have to long-press, swipe, tap, read, long-press, swipe back to my home face, and tap again (and feel mad at Apple instead of merely curious about the air quality). This takes even more steps if the info I seek is two screens over.
The loss of this feature is not something I will likely get used to since I do this action many times a day. I don't want to feel mad many times a day, so I will be switching back to my analog watches unless Apple comes to it's senses and fixes what they broke. I'll keep the Apple Watch on a charger to keep the battery healthy and occasionally use it (to the extent one would an analog watch). It'll be in the rotation of my many watches, instead of being on my wrist all the time. The watch isn't a critical piece of the ecosystem like the iPhone, it's just handy - until it isn't.
kontickle wrote:
Why over-complicate a simple procedure? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Press and hold and swipe, same as I’ve always done.
Works fine on 10.0 locally, too.
Documented here: Customize the watch face - Apple Support
It might take a slightly longer hold to start the face swiping, but that does mean fewer accidental face switches.
brettf1200 wrote:
It's just not there anymore and there's no discernible reason for its absence.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people complained about how annoying it was. I know I did. I hated looking down at my watch to discover the face had gotten accidentally changed.
You can send feedback to Apple here:
Yeah, this is by design. I've been living with and reporting this "bug" since July. I've been feeling like the only person on the planet who uses their watch like this after thinking for the past seven years that this was the only way everyone has ever used Apple Watch.
It's mind blowingly bizarre how Apple made a decision to simply delete the entire user experience. I sent my Watch back to Apple to get downgraded. Thankfully, I received it back today reverted to OS 9. I can use my watch again, hooray! Still, it's frustrating that Apple is continuing along a year's long path of choosing to make things more difficult for no reason at all.
Apple has handicapped the entire Apple Watch user experience for the sake of those slightly bothered by a less than minor annoyance.
I've submitted feedback Product Feedback - Apple that the Share Watch Face icon (accessed with tap+hold) be replaced with a Lock icon. This way users who have issues with the face changing will no longer be burdened to simple flick their finger tip to select a face of their choice and can instead choose to lock a face of their choosing until another is reselected.
morc_37 wrote:
I also use the swipe left and right all the time on my watch. It is very sad that this feature is now lost. Yes there are other ways of doing this but they take longer and require more interactions with the watch. (Time wasted)
This makes more friction for using my watch and makes it less useful.
It would be different if there was a way to set what you want your swipe actions to do but that does not seem like an option.
Very disappointing.
Send your feedback to:
https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch
ilittlewood wrote:
The solution would have been to allow people to lock to a particular face rather than completely cripple the UI for everyone.
Have you suggested that to Apple?
kontickle wrote:
Why over-complicate a simple procedure? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Tell Apple:
For many of us, the previous set up was annoying and inconvenient. I hated looking down at my watch and seeing the face had accidentally changed. I would end up deleting most of my faces just to make the problem a little less annoying.
AngieKR wrote:
I don't think several of you realize you could change your watch face just by swiping left or right and don't understand. Here's an example: I have 3 different watch faces I switch(ed) between. One for every day that has weather, calendar, messages. A second for walking/running which has my rings, exercise app shortcut, and music shortcut. And a third for swimming, which has bigger rings so I can see in water, exercise app shortcut, and timer shortcut. It's a feature that was taken away. And yes, we all know how to change them the other ways, but it was so easy to just swipe left or right.
Yes, many of us volunteers have used the left/right swiping to switch watch faces. And we understand watchOS 10 has changed that to long press the watch face, swipe left or right, tap watch face use the watch face.
We also know from experience of these discussions there were less experienced users that kept finding the watch face changed, and did not know how to get back to their preferred watch face. And I'm sure the posts we saw was a fraction of the Apple Support calls, and the Apple Store visits to get the watch face back to where the user expected it.
This change did not occur in a vacuum.
If you want Apple to make left/right swipe an option, then send your feedback to Apple at:
https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch
ilittlewood wrote:
That's exactly the point: it *DOES NOT* improve the user experience - it's a massive step backward, making the watch interface clunky and unpleasant to use. I really have to question if the person who made the decision to remove swipe left/right to change watch faces has ever actually used the device.
Except that it does for some people. I absolutely hated it when I would look down at my watch to see that the face had accidentally gotten changed. This is a significant improvement for me. It's foolish to assume that the way you (or I) use a device is the only way, the preferred way by most people, or the best way.
Apple has access to tremendous amounts of user data. I suspect they are far more aware of how many people swiped to change their watch face and how often.
You can let Apple know your thoughts here:
ilittlewood wrote:
No it isn't - it's a pain that massively reduces the utility of the device.
In your opinion. Not everyone uses the watch in the same way that you do. Apple has access to huge amounts of user data. They know how much features get used. It's unfortunate when the feature you like doesn't make the popular cut or gets removed and replaced by something Apple things will work better. But, it happens. I still miss glances. And a weird contextual Siri feature from a couple of version ago of iOS.
When you have multiple faces setup to show different information and want to quickly look at multiple screens, the Click-hold-swipe, Click-hold-swipe, Click-hold-swipe just makes it not worth the effort because something that took 2-3s now takes in excess of 10.
I strongly suspect that the vast majority of people do not use multiple watch faces in any given day. That doesn't mean that the people who do are wrong (or, conversely, superior). It just means that Apple has not prioritized that usage pattern.
It's an absolutely ABYSMAL interface change.
To some people. A welcome change to others.
but fast-swiping is essential.
Apparently, Apple disagrees with you. However, you can let them know your thoughts here:
mamoon777 wrote:
Yeah that’s super bad
I can’t get to use lots of functions without face switching
pls bring it back
Watch face switching works just fine on watchOS 10. Better than it has ever worked.
How to switch watch faces? Press the face for about a second, and the available watch faces can then be slid right or left, or the current watch face can be edited.
This press-and-brief-hold prevents freely skidding through the available watch faces. On watchOS 9 and earlier, finding some random watch face selected was a common occurrence. At least, that was what was common around here. That hasn’t happened on watchOS 10; the selected watch face stays selected.
Here is the official how to: Change the watch face on your Apple Watch - Apple Support
Don’t like the press-and-brief-hold on watchOS 10, send your feedback to Apple: https://apple.com/feedback
cv1moore wrote:
“Better than ever”? I think not. For those of us who use multiple faces with multiple complications, it’s less user friendly. Dare I say, less intuitive! This is a step backwards. Its not Apples style. Frustrating. It’s like changing everything we knew and loved and forcing us to use something all together different that is by far worse than before, and, will not be more intuitive with repeated use. Will only always cause further frustrations.
Tell Apple via
https://www.apple.com/feedback/watch
The more users that send feedback, the more likely it will reach a decision maker.
There is nothing to fix. In response to many complaints from users who suffered unexpected changes to their watch faces from accidental swipes (by clothing or during sleep?) the method to switch watch faces was made into an action with two deliberate steps.
No, not “is like” but “was like” because Apple saw sense and offered a choice in OS10.2 onwards
This is an infuriating change primarily because the left/right swipe gesture has simply been disabled rather than replaced with some other effect. It's just not there anymore and there's no discernible reason for its absence.
I cannot change watch face by swiping after upgrading to WatchOS 10
