Apple Watch Series 2 Watchos 7

[Nina Zahra]

Notsure if this is just me or did Apple just remove the ability to swipe between watch faces? After updating, the only way to get to the neighboring watch face is to long-press to (brings up the edit button) and then I can move to a neighboring watch face. If that's intentional, that sucks. I use four neighboring faces for different purposes and am swiping between them constantly. This will make using the watch very laborious for me.

"Accidental watch face changing???" You've gotta be kidding. How hard is it to swipe back to the right face? They tipped over the entire design and let it fall in the mud over that? If this stays permanent, I'm putting my Series 5 white ceramic on permanent battery life support (the reason my iPhone 1 still works) and wear it occasionally just for fashion reasons, and go back to analog watches for daily use. The loss of left/right swipe plus the loss of the crown interacting with faces like kaliedescope, solar dial, metropolitan, all three astronomy, etc means I lost my favorite fidget (the crown). Definitely going back to analog. No one wants to wear a source of frustration on their wrist.

Major bummer, yes! I updated to 10 last night and was also shocked to find I had to long press, swipe and click to get to my other watch faces. Watch faces are my preselected groups of complications that I use throughout the day for different events and times of the day. A simple fun swipe that was replaced by multiple gyrations that will eventually drive me mad!!

It's not crazy talk. It's FAR more than an annoyance. They have REMOVED THE USER INTERFACE. It's the same as if swiping home screens from iPhone or iPad were removed. Worse, really. It's like removing the Time from a watch.

If Apple doesn't listen to user feedback and revert the operating system to something that's functional, my current Series 8 on WatchOS 9 will be the last Apple Watch I own. This isn't a threat or a promise. It's not something I want. It's an inevitability that Apple has burdened users with. That's the part that hurts the most. Well, that and people claiming it's not unusable.

The more I consider it, the more I worry. Smart Stacks is supposedly the replacement for changing watch faces. Smart Stacks is a horrible design for people who want lots of information at a quick glance (this is what I thought all Apple Watch owners used their watches for). The crown is imprecise - it's wiggle-y. Not enough data is shown at once. It's cumbersome, inefficient, dynamic, and not predictable. It's a bad user interface for a smart watch. A smart watch should function primarily as a device to give you a lot of information as bold and efficiently as possible. WatchOS 10 fails on many accounts to do so. This is an observable and repeatable objective fact.

But turning what was a single gesture action into a triple motion press/swipe/press is ludicrously over complicating what was a simple and intuitive control that after 4 years with my series 5 is very much ingrained in muscle memory.

Since you're new in the Apple Support Communities, you are unaware of how many folks complained in this forum about the constant accidental switching of watch faces! Millions around the world welcomed the tap & hold to activate watch face swutching.

With watch faces, I can easily swipe from one to the next to get a ton of information - at a glance. I can even swipe faces and open apps all in one motion as I'm raising my wrist before I even look at the watch because I know how they're designed. A predictable user interface is superior to an unpredictable one.

I very well may end up switching to some other brand of smart watch. That's disappointment and hurtful because I love Apple Watch so much. I love it being the only device I need when I leave the house. I can do that, I can rely exclusively on Apple Watch for days, because OS 9 is an intuitive, ergonomic, and joyful user experience.

It seems that all watch faces display the time as 10:09 and then jump to the current time. That does seem to be new behavior but it happens in milliseconds and certainly isn't something to get ruffled about.

Turning off Wi-Fi on the phone and forcing phone/watch to use cellular allows the weather complication to load properly. Noticed the issue was only happening at home and not when out running errands or at work where I'd be on cellular.

Same here. Stopped working last night and still not updating this morning. Phone (14 Pro) and watch (Watch 9) both updated to 17.0.1 and 10.0.1 respectively. The little weather widget (when I scroll up) also not updating and showing dashes. I have tried resetting (holding crown and side button) and restarting several times. No luck.

Yesterday I checked it and all the data was there and working normally. I hadn't changed anything about my watch in days. Then a couple hours later the Weather app failed like usual, again with no changes to my watch. Arg!

Same here. I had an issue with the iPhone 15 pro max and wifi 6e in October of 2023. The initial iOS software disconnected from the network on iOS 17.0.1 until iOS 17.2. That has been fixed, but now I have a watch that refuses to load data on secure wifi networks. I thought maybe it was Wi-Fi 6e again, but it happens on any network that requires a password, whether the watch remembers or leashes Wi-Fi. If I join a public network am not on a protected wifi network, or am on cellular only, I have zero problems. I first noticed it with the many weather complications, then I decided to attempt to update an app in the watch app store exclusively on the watch, and it wouldn't load.

Strangely, I get texts, but all other data, including watch OS and third-party apps, do not work. I'm wondering if anyone else has tried to load data when this is happening outside of the weather app? I wasn't even able to do support diagnostics over the phone, the watch just said 'connecting' and refused to connect even though it is paired and I can see things like how much storage I am using currently (that doesn't require data, but Bluetooth sharing with the phone).

It seems to be a glitch in how data is processed when on protected, wifi networks. Currently on the most stable release of all Apple devices. Attempting to escalate to engineering because I've all but ruled out hardware at this time and a new watch will not resolve the issue.

Detail: All my Apple devices are set to Australia for the region, which defaults to 12hr clock. I change all devices to display/use 24hr clock. Watch was the same, and assumed it was set that way. Noticed just now that Weather widget in dock (scroll crown up function) was showing 12hr clock. Can't change this on the watch, but in the Watch app on the iPhone I went into 'Clock' settings and noticed 24hr clock was toggled off (no idea why). Turned 24hr back on and all the weather complications updated immediately and the widgets showed 24hr clock again. So that seems to have fixed it for me.

Over the weekend I decided to wipe the watch and reload 10.0.1 (I did not even restore a backup) the weather app still did not work, but after about 3 hours I got a message on the watch that it had updated my 911 emergency location and after I accepted the message, once I did that, I noticed that my weather complications started to work...

I will not talk here about my 5 hour conversation with apple support on Sunday (will post in another thread) but lets just say... there are a LOT of bugs I CONFIRMED in 10.0.1 and 17.0.1

I just tried to upgrade to iPhone 12, but it wouldn't pair with my series 1 Apple Watch. My watch does work (just re-paired it) with my iPhone XR running 14.7.1. I returned the 12 and am back on my XR. I can't say this makes any sense, nor is it good policy to orphan the old watches. I will stick with my XR indefinitely as long as my watch keeps ticking! I just hope I don't accidentally brick my watch with an iPhone patch some day....

I have an iPhone 14 running iOS 16.1 and my series 5 watch running watchOS 9.1. I was able to turn on Developer Mode on the phone by going to Settings--> Privacy & Security --> Developer Mode. On the watch however (I'm doing this directly on the watch and not on the watch app on the phone) once I'm in Privacy & Security, there is no option to select Developer Mode. How do I get my watch in Developer Mode in order to get a successful build in xCode?

I had Xcode playing nice with my older Apple Watch, and was able to load apps that I wrote onto it. Since I got a new watch, I can no longer test apps on my watch. It is listed as "waiting for first unlock" in the simulator list despite it and my phone both being unlocked... I thought the solution might be that I needed to turn on developer mode--that's when I discovered the option is missing).

After a while and quitting/restarting Xcode while my phone was connected, the message changed to say developer mode was disabled on my watch. Then the developer mode setting magically appeared and I could enable it. Then the Xcode message changed back to waiting for first unlock. Then I had to trust the computer (again - I already did this on the new watch while trying to debug this problem). It still wasn't working until I quit and restarted Xcode yet one more time. Then it finally worked.

For me it took un-pairing and re-pairing the phone to Xcode, which then decided it didn't know my watch's metadata anymore for a bit... (Device was called for a while) But once Xcode re-fetched the device metadata, and got into a state where it said developer mode was disabled, only at THAT point did the option of enabling Developer mode appear in Settings > Privacy & Security for me. (Way at the bottom, so you know where it ISN'T, and know where to look once it DOES show up.)

0.) I turned on developer mode on my iPhone1.) I tried to run watchOS app from Xcode on my watch although it said its unavailable2.) I turned off developer mode on my iPhone and they turned it back on3.) Tried to run app watchOS app from Xcode again on my watch, this time I got error massage that I need to turn on developer mode4.) I went back to Privacy&Settings on my watch I Developer Mode appeared on the bottom

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