Q: Can you use apple watch on the inside wrist?

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/

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.

Turning your wrist down will activate the screen. This is the only solution I got for me a right handed wearing on right hand inside my wrist.

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.