How do I revert/downgrade from watchOS 10 to watchOS 9?

beastlet wrote:

Not being able to easily swipe between watch faces is a deal breaker for me. As others have said it makes the watch useless. I spent years building up my modular faces with the apps I need (mainly for my job) and now accessing them is a pain. If I'm going to have to go back to my phone for everything I might as well ditch this watch and just buy a digital one that doesn't need to be charged all the time.

Tell Apple:

Product Feedback - Apple

Also, although it's not as robust as it may become, the Smart Stack has some potentional. You may find exploring it worthwhile.

New way: Step 1 tap AND hold, step 2 swipe, step 3 tap. Old way: step 1 swipe…done. The new way is NOT simple—it takes much longer and requires 300% more interactions. The new way is NOT consistent with how my iPhone, iPads, nor Mac computers work.

[Edited by Moderator] 

It is 100% consistent with how you change the Lock Screen on an iPhone or iPad which, like a watch face, are also customizable with widgets and other shortcuts to apps, features or functions.

Macs don't have touch screen operating systems.

I don't see the correlation between swiping between desktops & full-screen apps and swiping between watch faces as I do between switching between iPhone/iPad Lock Screens and swiping between faces.

We saw many, many more complaints about accidental watch face switching than we are seeing about this new method of face switching.

I do see correlation between swiping on the various Apple platforms, as was explained earlier. You never saw a complaint about how easy it was to swipe between watch faces from many many other users because the simplicity and efficiency was appreciated and expected. It was something that made the watch an efficient delightful experience to organize and use. The current tap-hold-swipe-tap is not appreciated and it does not meet my expectations. Period.

I disabled everything related to location services on the watch. I deleted the weather app on the iPhone which removed it from the watch. Turned off background app refresh. That helped…a little. Apple Support told me manually make the watch charge to 100%, but not to disable optimized charging setting. I was then referred to talk to a genius at an Apple Store in a nearby city.

It surely is true. Apple would not have heard a complaint about watch face switching from the many many users who liked it. Even if they did get complaints, the old way of watch face swiping should have been an option. Looks like Apple trashed this feature at the behest of a small minority of users. Additionally, I’ve never seen nor heard a complaint about annoying accidental watch face swipe changes from any (many) Apple Watch users I know, many who have been using Apple Watch since it came out. I’ve already communicated feedback to Apple about watchOS 10 dissatisfaction. I have other nice watches that I’m using again—until Apple fixes this unacceptable situation with watchOS 10. So glad I was able to cancel an Ultra2 order.

justacustomer wrote:

Looks like Apple trashed this feature at the behest of a small minority of users. Additionally, I’ve never seen nor heard a complaint about annoying accidental watch face swipe changes from any (many) Apple Watch users I know, many who have been using Apple Watch since it came out.

What you may not realize is that Apple has access to huge amounts of user data. They don't rely solely on self-selected feedback. They know, far better than any of us ever will, what features are used frequently by most users and what ones aren't. It's easy to fall victim to the logical fallacy that, because we like (or don't like) something, most other people feel the same.

I have other nice watches that I’m using again—until Apple fixes this unacceptable situation with watchOS 10.

You should always use the tool that best meets your needs. No one here minds if you use a different brand of watch.

justacustomer wrote:

The tool that best met my needs was watchOS 9.6.3.

Perhaps I should rephrase my post: Out of the available tools, you should choose the one that best meets your needs.

WatchOS 10 is NOT a better tool.

It is for me. Needs and tastes vary.

I just updated my watch yesterday and it is awful. They changed the layout of nearly everything and now it is difficult and annoying to use, especially after being used to the old layouts. Apple, PLEASE make an option to downgrade the watch.

This wasn’t an issue for me and other users. I frequently switched between faces for different information, one face for example had weather one was for exercising etc. This defeats the purpose for having multiple faces.

Like losing the ability to swipe up for the control panel, Apple should give users the option to go back to this.

Wstarbuck wrote:

True. And I don’t have to give Apple my money ether

You should absolutely buy the tool that best meets your needs. That makes far more sense than expecting Apple to change 40 years of development philosophy.

I paired my watch 8 to a business iPhone 12 for a short five day trip overseas, and the watch updated to WatchOS 10. Now, I can't use it with my personal iPhone 8.

I have lost a lot of functionality with the watch since I cannot now use it with my personal iPhone.

This is total BS.

So, I’m to blame for trying to protect my device and information from vulnerabilities, not anticipating an update that would make my devices incompatible, and being unwilling to spend $1,000 or more to replace a functioning phone.

Great to know. Thanks but no thanks for your feedback.

I'm having Apple Watch almost since the beginning. At this time, switching Watch faces where exactly as it is now with WatchOS 10. Apple seemed quite fast to realize that this is cumbersome and a gives bad user experience and introduced the feature to switch between Watch faces by a simple swipe. That was in my opinion one of the greatest improvements in the WatchOS they made.

And now we are back at square one? Really?

To be even a bit more sarcastic: Next to come is that Watch applications are running on the iPhone instead of on the Watch as it was at the beginning?...

I'm really disappointed!

Furthermore, a simple feature like enable / disable Retina display always on in the control center still didn't make it to WatchOS 10.