Can you use apple watch on the inside wrist?

I tested the apple watch multiple times at the apple store and the "auto on" function (when raising your wrist or turning the wrist so that you can read the watch face) DID NOT WORK when wearing the watch on the inside of the wrist. The Apple employees confirmed with me that the screen will not wake up if you wear the watch that way, unless you tap the screen. This is the one thing that is holding me back from buying an apple watch.

How can you submit feedback to apple regarding this?

Thanks for the feedback link Nick. I have now proffered several suggestions there.

As for the "difficulty" of handling the more sensible (if less common) inside of the wrist orientation...it is not about the sensors at all. Quite simply, the sensors can sense everything they need to regardless. The development is in the software that "listens" to the sensors.

These days all of this kind of work is done using machine learning techniques. They simply "record" sensor values for many many motions of the arm/wrist/hand, and "label" them as "yes this is an attempt to make the watch come on" or "no, stay asleep". They then use machine learning techniques to have a computer develop ways of comparing new incoming sensor data to what the software has learned about sensor data for these two cases.

So, while it is not a trivial development to make the auto-on detection work for inside of wrist, it would take a small amount of additional work of the same sort they are already familiar with. They would also need to add this as a new orientation in the UI and have the auto-on detection use that to decide which set of learned responses to use.

I tested wearing the watch on the inside of my wrist when i did cardio this morning and it became wildly inaccurate. The cardio equipment showed my rate was 115 and the watch had me at 150. When I twisted the watch back to the outside of my wrist, Apple Watch matched the heart rate showing on the cardio equipment.

I know that this is old, but I just tried wearing it on the inside for a lifting session and I found that it worked a lot better. Outside the wrist averages 60 bpm slightly above resting while on the inside it averaged 150s moving between 140-177 bpm. Outside wrist seems to work just fine on most cardio workouts, I have had issues with the row machine.

Just got mine today. VERY ANNOYING!

The heart rate monitor seems to work just fine for me wearing the watch the "wrong way".

My problem is with the "wrist detection". I haven't worn a watch in a decade and a half. Started using my cell as a "pocket watch" way back then and never looked back. Today I un-boxed my new apple watch and immediately put it on "backwards". I always used to wear my watch that way. Don't know if it is from a past life as a fighter pilot (or a nurse), or if it simply makes more sense than the way normal people wear a watch.

Anyway, even 15 years later, wearing the watch this way seems to me to be the only right way...and yet the millennials at Apple that did the machine learning with the gyro to do the auto-on detection apparently never wore a watch before.

Apple, PLEASE add some more settings to the "orientation" menu for those of us who wear a watch in the only sensible way (with the face pointing at you without pointing your elbow at the ceiling.)

Apple won't hear you here - this is user-to-user. Go to the link below to leave feedback.

Myself, I think you're bing a little unfair on the designers - the majority of people who wear a watch wear it on the outside of the wrist. I appreciate that it's a pain for those, like you, who wear it the other way. I can also see the technical challenges in finding/creating a sensor that works reliably on the inside - much of the technology here is immature.

Anyway - feedback page is her:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Auto on when you hold your arm up would be mighty difficult given the angle the watch needs to be at to trigger this. I guess you can turn this off and just use a tap to illuminate the display if you wished.

I often wear mine on the inside but - as suggested by Winston - it does have trouble figuring out when I turn my wrist to read the time. I often have to tap it. Also, I haven't tested if the heart rate readings are less accurate on the underside.

Douglas Bailey wrote:

Also, I haven't tested if the heart rate readings are less accurate on the underside.

I'm inclined to believe they are likely to be just as accurate but less prone to inaccuracy, if you see what I mean.

Boy loz wrote:

I Am wondering if you can use Apple watch on the inside wrist Instead of facing outwards, it's just the way I've always worn a watch, and wondering if I have to change?

The manual says that the heart rate monitoring wouldn't be as accurate if worn on the inside. However, other people have posted that it works fine.

Both my mother and my brother have always worn watches on the inside of their wrists. I've never figured out how they (and you) don't bang them up on desks and edges of keyboards. But I'm sure it would be as annoying to you to change to wearing a watch on the outside as it would be for me to change to the inside.

Although Apple specifically say the watch should be on the outside of the wrist for the sensors to work, I did test this on the inside, and it seemed to be fine. I measured heart rat and got a sensible number back, although I didn't check it against anything else. Everything else was fine.

I didn't test during exercise, so there may be measurement issues there, but I'd only expect those to affect heart rate

Setting aside the risk of banging the face on things, it doesn't do any actual harm

I also tested my answer before I posted. Turning your wrist to illuminate the display when the wrist is turned DOES WORK with the watch on the inside, but as I said previously it is very difficult to achieve. I understand from a practical point of view that the outcome is much the same (you'll need to tap the screen), but from a technical point of view the answers are contradictory and I think it important to point that out.

I tried moving my arm in a "backwards" motion to activate and then moving it to where I can see it, and it kinda worked...sometimes...but far from awesome.

I also tried switching the setting in the watch app to the opposite of the arm I wear it on, hoping that might fool it into using a different detection algorithm that might just turn out to be easier to activate in the "inside of wrist" orientation. It didn't. It was worse.

I hope lots of you will use the link above to send feedback to apple to add this very necessary settings feature.

From a technical and medical standpoint, the capillaries are easier to discern and measure on the inside of the wrist; but Apple developed their software with the expectation that most Apple Watches would be worn on the outside of the wrist, so noise filtering of the raw sensor data is likely to be less than optimal for inside the wrist wear, although, if Apple is using an adaptive algorithm, it is plausible that it may adjust its long term trims of these filters with sufficient baseline data, from regular inside the wrist wear.

The watch works fine on the inside of the wrist, until you exercise. Hitting the dial seems to turn off the app your on. As your hand moves more towards the inside of the wrist there is more chance of turning the app off, making work outs only last a few minutes.

Don't know why Apple configured to only be accurate when worn one way