watchOS10 brings many new features to your Apple Watch, including smart stack widgets and the awesome Snoopy Watch Face! One of the smaller changes associated with watchOS 10 is around changing the watch faces on your Apple Watch.
Many Apple Watch users have different watch faces depending on their activity. It is not uncommon to see users switch their watch faces when working out or use another customized watch face when listening to a podcast or music.
On older watchOS software, Apple Watch faces could easily be changed with a simple swipe action between the available watch faces on your Apple Watch.
The old process of easily swiping out Apple Watch faces was also a hassle for many, and they would accidentally switch to a different watch face by swiping left to right, unintentionally changing to a different watch face.
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Related reading
- How to get the Snoopy Watch face and customize it on your Apple Watch
- How to change the clock or time position in the Portraits and Photos watch face on Apple Watch?
- How to create and share your Apple Watch face with friends and family
- My Apple Watch’s screen and watch face is upside down! It’s an easy fix
How to change Apple Watch Face in watchOS 10+
If you discover that you can’t change your watch face since updating to watchos10, you’re going to need to get used to long-pressing the watch’s screen instead of swiping edge-to-edge!
- Press and hold your watch’s existing watch face.
- Next, swipe left or right to select your preferred Watch face.
- Tap on your desired watch face to replace your existing watch face with your selected one.
- You can also add a new watch face by pressing the Plus icon (+.)
- Scroll through the watch face gallery options and tap the Add button to download that watch face to your Apple Watch.
- You can also add a new watch face by pressing the Plus icon (+.)
- To change the watch face’s style, complications, position, and color, tap Edit and make any changes you want to these watch face options.
Sharing your Apple Watch face is now easy with watchOS 10+.
- Press and hold your Apple Watch’s existing watch face. On the Edit watch face screen, tap on the Share button on your left.
- Select a listed contact or scroll down and choose to send your watch face via Messages or Mail apps. You can add more than one contact.
- Choose the contact(s), scroll down to the bottom of the screen, and tap on Send.
Before sending out the watch face, Apple shows you how many complications you have embedded in the watch face and other details.
WatchOS 10’s new watch faces 
Along with Snoopy, watchOS 10 introduces four additional new watch faces: Palette, Solar Analog, Nike Globe, and Modular Ultra for Apple Watch Ultra.
- The Snoopy watch face features Snoopy and Woodstock interacting and playing with the watch hands, reacting to the weather conditions in the area, or even exercising together when you get active with the Workouts app.
- The Palette watch face depicts time in colors using three overlapping layers. As the time changes, the colors also shift.
- Solar Analog watch face shows the time on a luminous dial using light and shadow to reflect the sun’s position throughout the day.
- The Nike Globe watch face lights up the lines on the globe with each passing second.
- Modular Ultra watch face has the most complications of any Apple Watch face and is for the Apple Watch Ultra series only. The Modular Utra watch face shows real-time data, including seconds, altitude, or depth on the edges of the screen. In the dark, the ambient light sensor automatically activates Night Mode.
Apple Watch Faces and Focus Modes in watchOS 10+ 
Many users have their watch faces configured for different Focus modes. We are happy to report that Apple hasn’t removed this functionality in watchOS 10. Apple Watch faces auto-change depending upon the selected Focus Mode in watchOS 10.
Focus modes are very helpful on your Apple Watch. You can also choose a different watch face to display when each Focus is active.
For example, when Work Focus is active, your Apple Watch can display the Simple watch face, or when you set up your Apple Watch into a workout-related focus, you can have more complex complications that help you analyze your workout and perhaps automatically turn on DND on your watch.
The only difference for Focus modes is how you access Control Center. Starting in watchOS 10, you just press the side button once to open Control Center.
This action used to open your recent apps or app dock–which in watchOS 10+ is now a double press of the Digital Crown.
Here is how you can customize Focus screens for your Apple Watch
At this time, you can customize Focus mode screens using your iPhone. You cannot customize these settings on your Apple Watch or in the Watch app.
- On your iPhone, go to Settings > Focus.
- Choose a current focus from the list or set up a new focus.
- Scroll to the section Customize Screens, then tap the Apple Watch image and choose option.
- Select a watch face, then tap Done.
- If you don’t see the watch face option you want to use for that focus, add that watch face to your watch using the Watch app or by pressing and holding your current watch face and selecting New.
Still no third-party watch faces for Apple Watch
Unlike Fitbits or other wearOS-based smartwatches, Apple does not provide a way for users to use third-party watch faces on their Apple Watch. This has been a pain point for many Apple Watch users since the time Apple introduced the watch.
watchOS 10 does not support third-party watch faces.
Recently, Apple’s VP of technology, Kevin Lynch, and his Apple colleague, Diedre Caldbeck explained Apple’s stance in an interview.
Lynch said Apple puts a “huge amount of effort” into every watch face to ensure they work “uniformly and simply,” and said Apple needs to plan ahead to make sure watch faces continue to work “if we want to change something or add new possibilities.”
Caldbeck added that developers can create complications for their watchOS apps, which adds a layer of customization to watch faces by allowing for glanceable information to be displayed, such as a CARROT Weather forecast. Starting with watchOS 10, the new Smart Stack widgets feature offers space for up to three complications.
This probably means that we will not see third-party watch faces on Apple Watch anytime in the near future.
Final thoughts
We hope that you found this short article useful. Please let us know if you have any comments or if you would like to share a tip or two about the management of Apple Watch faces.
