17 TicWatch Pro 3 Tips and Tricks for new and experienced users

The new TicWatch Pro 3 is here, and it brings quite a lot of features with it. Many of them are under-the-hood additions that are hard to find – which is why we decided to give you our top 17 TicWatch Pro 3 tips and tricks!

We’ve got everything from basic how-to tips all the way up to battery-saving recommendations and advanced tricks that few people know about.

So, without any further ado, let us get right into it!

Related reading:

• Which TicWatch is the Best for you (2021)
• 10 Best Smartwatches and Fitness Trackers Under $80
• Which Smartwatch has the best heart rate tracking accuracy? It depends
• wearOS now has a formidable partner in SnapDragon 4100. Will it step up?

A Quick Peek at the TicWatch Pro 3

The 4 Most Impactful Features

1. Essential Mode: Disables everything but the secondary display – which can extend your battery life up to 45 days! You can find it under the system settings.
2. Always On Display: Uses the much brighter and colorful AMOLED display when on standby. Find it under the display settings but keep in mind that it consumes more battery.
3. Do Not Disturb: Mutes all notifications until you disable it. Find it by swiping down on the home screen and tapping on the “DND” icon (The circle with the horizontal line).
4. Audio Transcription: After recording something, you can convert it into text by using the Mobvoi app

Customization

5. Use the Layered Display: If you want to get more battery life, make sure that AOD is off (More about that above).

6. Select a Different Watch Face: Long pressing on your watch while on the home screen will allow you to select a different watch face. Pick something that better suits your taste for a better overall experience.

7. Download More Watch Faces: The Google Play Store offers tons of other watch faces to choose from. Check it out if the pre-installed ones are not to your liking.

Voice Assistant

8. Take Advantage of Google Assistant: Your watch has a voice assistant pre-installed. Activate it by holding down the top button and see how it can be of benefit to you.

9. Enable “OK Google”: Tired of having to use a button to activate your voice assistant? Activate “OK Google” under the personalization settings, and you’ll never have to rely on your hands for it again.

A Smartwatch at its Finest

10. Get an eSIM (LTE model coming soon for supported regions and carriers): If your TicWatch 3 Pro comes with eSIM support, you can activate it through the Wear OS and Vodafone app (Subscription fees may apply).

11. Control Spotify: Install the Spotify app through the Google Play Store to remotely control your phone’s music playback.

12. Leave your Phone Behind: Use the TicExercise app to track your workouts. Since the watch comes with a built-in GPS, you won’t have to rely on your smartphone for the workout duration.

13: Install 3rd Party Apps: Thanks to WearOS, you can go to the Google Play Store and download tons of 3rd party apps. Make sure to check it out.

14. Remove Unnecessary Apps: Don’t forget to delete anything useless to free up space and speed up your watch. Apps can be deleted both through the settings and the Play Store.

15. Keep Voice Notes: You can use the “Recording” app to record voice messages and voice notes.

16. Use SPO2 Monitoring: Blood Oxygen saturation monitoring can be useful to see where you stand physically. Find the app on the main menu.

17. Take Care of your Battery: As a pro tip, make sure to stay away from heat and try to keep your battery level between 20-80 or 90%. That can increase your battery’s lifespan.

Our Top 17 TickWatch Pro 3 Tips and Tricks Detailed

1: Take Advantage of “Essential Mode”

As we mentioned at the beginning, the TicWatch Pro 3 is full of features. And while that’s obviously a good thing, some features consume a lot of power – which is bad for battery life.

One way of fixing that is by disabling features that you don’t need. And this can be done either for individual features or by disabling everything with Essential Mode.

As the name suggests, Essential Mode turns off everything except the essential features – such as the time.

Definitely consider turning that on when you only need your smartwatch to work as a watch and nothing more. So, to turn Essential Mode on:

1. Open the watch’s system settings
2. System
3. Essential Mode
4. And accept

Mobvoi claims that this can increase your battery life up to 45 days – partly thanks to the secondary ultra-low-power display.

But, in exchange, your smartwatch won’t be that “smart” until you quit.

To exit Essential Mode, hold down the power button until the startup image comes on.

This is bound to change when Google releases the newest wearOS soon with more battery optimization features.

Given that the TicWatch Pro 3 comes with the latest 4100 Qualcomm processor (Fossil watches still have the old 3100 processor), this should help with faster processing and much-improved battery power new wearOS.

2: Take Advantage of the Layered Display

Speaking of saving battery, did you know that the TicWatch Pro 3 comes with two displays? The main one is an AMOLED display, while there’s also a low-power LCD one above it.

It should be enabled by default. But, if it’s not, you can enable it by turning off AOD (Always On Display) in:

1. Settings
2. Display
3. Turn off “Always screen on” to off

This can be confusing because the secondary display is supposed to come on when the main one turns off.

But, “Always On Display” actually refers to always keeping the main display enabled, not the secondary one.

This layered or vintage type display goes a long way in power saving instead of the persistent ‘Always-on display.’

3: Enable AOD (Always On Display)

While we are on the subject, if battery life isn’t very important to you, there is always the option of using the Always On Display.

This disables the secondary display and keeps the much brighter and colorful AMOLED display instead when the watch goes to sleep.

To turn AOD on:

1. Go to settings
2. Display
3. And turn “Always screen on” on

Despite how much better and brighter it looks, don’t forget that the AMOLED display consumes much more battery than the secondary LCD.

4: Pick a Different Watch Face

One of the most simple yet effective TicWatch Pro 3 tips is to customize it to your liking.

In case you are not familiar with it yet, the watch offers quite a few options that you can adjust as far as looks are concerned.

And if there’s one thing that makes a big difference, that’s the watch face.

The watch face is the first thing you see when the display comes on. To change the TicWatch Pro 3 watch face:

1. Long press on your current watch face/home screen
2. Swiple left or right to choose a different watch face
3. And tap on the one you want

There’s also the option of configuring a watch face by tapping on the gear icon.

And if that’s not enough for you, feel free to download 3rd party watch faces. More about that down below.

5: Download Extra Watch Faces

Want more watch faces? There are plenty to choose from on Google Play. To add more watch faces on your TicWatch Pro 3:

1. Open the Google Play Store
2. Select “Watch Faces”
3. Then install whatever strikes your fancy

And if you no longer want a watch face, you can remove it by swiping up on the watch face selection menu.

6: Don’t Forget about your Google Assistant

The TicWatch Pro 3 comes with Google Assistant support right out of the box.

This allows you to use it exactly as you would on a full-fledged smartphone without any known limitations (Except hardware-related ones such as LTE).

You can open Google Assistant on your TicWatch Pro 3 by either holding down the top right button of the watch or by saying “Ok Google” (Needs to have “Ok Google” detection enabled).

Some of its most popular uses include:

1. Smart home usage
2. Music playback
3. Online searches
4. Weather forecast
5. Real-time translation (Doesn’t always work well due to Google Translate limitations)
6. Add events to the calendar
7. And more depending on how you want to use it

It’s a handy tool when your hands are tied – such as when you are on a long run or cooking.

7: Activate the Google Assistant With your Voice

One of the coolest things about Google Assistant is that it allows us to do many tasks hands-free. But, what’s the point when we need to use both of our hands to activate it?

Fear not, as the TicWatch Pro 3 gives you the option of activating Google Assistant just by saying, “Ok, Google.” To turn that on, go to:

1. Settings
2. Personalization
3. And toggle “Ok Google” to on

8: Take Advantage of DND (Do Not Disturb)

Do Not Disturb is a feature that you can find on smartwatches and smartphones alike.

And, as the name suggests, it prevents others from disturbing you by temporarily muting notifications.

To enable DND (Do Not Disturb), all you have to do is:

1. Bring up the quick actions by swiping down from the home screen
2. And tapping on the “Do Not Disturb” icon (A circle with a horizontal line)

And you can easily go back to normal by disabling that feature in the very same way that you turned it on in the first place.

9: Activate your eSIM (Only for Germany and the UK)

The TicWatch Pro 3 comes with eSIM support. So, if you live in one of the regions where that’s supported, you should be able to get a monthly subscription and use your watch as a stand-alone device.

When writing this article, only Germany and the UK seem to be in the supported regions, with Vodafone as the sole supported carrier.

To get an eSIM for your TicWatch Pro 3:

1. Grab your phone and login to the WearOS app (Make sure that it’s already paired with your TicWatch Pro 3)
2. Tap “Connect to Vodafone”
3. Tap “Set up or buy a plan”
4. Log in to your Vodafone account
5. Select and confirm the eSIM plan of your choice
6. Tap the download button after you are done
7. Confirm the request on your TicWatch Pro 3 (Needs to be paired with the WearOS app first)

eSIM is digital-only. So, you won’t have to get your hands on a physical SIM card. If eSIM is supported in your region, follow the above instructions, and you should be good to go.

10: Control Music Playback

The TicWatch Pro 3 uses the Wear OS. This means that you should be able to install Spotify and control the music playback of your phone directly through the watch – a feature that’s invaluable for joggers.

To do that:

1. Go to Google Play
2. Install Spotify
3. Log into your account (Premium is only necessary for offline access)

And if the app is already setup for your smartphone, you should be good to go.

Unfortunately, despite having 8 gigabytes of local storage, the TicWatch Pro 3 can’t download Spotify songs. And that’s due to software limitations.

Things may change if Google and/or Spotify decide to do something about this. But, for now, only a handful of premium smartwatches can download and play Spotify songs offline.

You may be able to do the same with DRM-free music – but that’s a different story.

11: Leave your Phone Behind

Cheaper smartwatches and bands rely on your phone’s GPS for tracking workouts.

And that’s one of the main reasons you can’t use them independently from a phone. A premium smartwatch like TicWatch Pro 3, on the other hand, comes with a built-in GPS.

This means that you can go and track a workout just with the watch and nothing more by using the TicExercise app or even a 3rd party app such as Strava.

If you also live in a region where eSIM is supported for the TicWatch Pro 3, then you basically have a full-fledged smart device on your wrist ready to go.

12: Install 3rd Party Apps

Don’t forget that your smartwatch comes with 8 gigs of dedicated storage. Installing more apps is one of the best TicWatch Pro 3 tips that we can give you.

All you have to do is open Google Play/Play Store, look around, and pick whatever strikes your fancy.

There are plenty of options to choose from. Strava, Viber, Messenger, Spotify, Telegram, Outlook, Calm, and many more. Thank you, WearOS.

13: Get Rid of Useless Apps

Speaking of apps, don’t forget that anything like that is bound to take some of your local space. And, in some cases, apps can also slow down your device.

So, we’d highly recommend removing anything you don’t need. It’s one of the top, simplest TicWatch Pro 3 tips out there.

To uninstall apps on your watch and any other Wear OS watch:

1. Open the Play Store
2. Scroll down and tap to “My apps”
3. Tap on the app that you want to uninstall
4. Then tap on the “X” button/icon

Alternatively, you can do the same through:

1. Settings
2. Apps
3. Tap on the app
4. Uninstall
5. Accept

Individual apps don’t usually occupy a lot of space and don’t slow down your watch a lot. But add a lot of them, and they can make quite an impact. So, get rid of anything that’s not needed.

14: Keep Notes with Your Voice

The TicWatch Pro 3 comes equipped with a microphone, 8 gigabytes of built-in storage, and a pre-installed voice recorder.

This means that you can use it to make both short and long voice recordings while on the go.

And it doesn’t necessarily have to be about notes. Thanks to the option of being able to install 3rd party apps, you can also use something like Messenger to send voice messages.

So, to record with the TicWatch Pro 3:

1. Open the “Recording” app
2. Select “start recording”
3. And then feel free to pause or finish the recording as you see fit

You can then find and play your audio recordings by swiping left while on the recording app.

15: Convert your Voice Recordings into Text

The Mobvoi comes with an elegant feature that allows you to convert/automatically transcribe your voice recordings into text.

It’s obviously not going to be as accurate as a human. But there’s no arguing that it’s better than having to type everything in yourself.

To use this feature:

1. Open the Mobvoi app on your smartphone
2. Select “Recording Notes”
3. And tap on “Convert” for the recording that you want to convert

At the moment, only English and Chinese are supported. But, there is a chance that we are going to see more options in the future.

Again, the software isn’t going to be 100% accurate, which will be more noticeable in longer recordings.

16: Use your TicWatch Pro 3 to Make Sure you Are Healthy

Almost all smartwatches support heart rate monitoring nowadays.

However, only a small fraction comes with SaO2/oxygen saturation monitoring – and the TicWatch Pro 3 is included in that small percentage.

To detect your blood oxygen levels:

1. Open the TicOxygen app
2. And proceed to monitor your SsaO2 levels

About 98% is where you should be, and anything under 94% could mean trouble. But, as per usual, don’t rely too much on your smartwatch for health-related stuff.

Always consult your health expert when you feel like something’s wrong.

17: Take Care of your Battery

Smartwatches, just like smartphones, use Lithium-ion batteries.

And one thing that is not commonly known is that these kinds of batteries are under more stress when they are either depleted or fully charged.

This can somewhat shorten their lifespan in the long term. So, ideally, you want to keep your watch charged somewhere between 20% and 80%.

This can potentially increase your overall battery’s lifespan. But also, don’t forget that heat is actually the biggest enemy of batteries.

Bonus Tip # 18 Sleep Alarm in vibrate mode

TicWatch 3 Tips: Wrapping Up

These are our top TicWatch 3 Tips for now. If you have any questions or anything more to add, feel free to let us and everyone else about it in the comments section down below.

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