Apple watch tips

Look, there will be times when your Apple Watch inexplicably gets stuck. It could be a third party app messing something up, or it could just be one of those situations where your Apple Watch just isn’t responding to touches or button-presses. Believe me, it happens. In such situations, you can’t restart your watch because the buttons aren’t working. However, you can always force restart your Apple Watch. Simply press and hold the Digital Crown and the side button at the same time until you see the Apple logo pop up on the screen.

If you’re using an Apple Watch with your iPhone, chances are you’re also using AirPods to listen to music. Well, I’m sure you know that you can check your AirPods’ battery life from your iPhone’s widget screen, but did you know you can check it from the Apple Watch as well? Open the Control Center on your watch, and tap on the battery percentage tile. This will show up your Apple Watch battery percentage along with the AirPods’ battery. The best part about this is that this works even if your AirPods are connected to your iPhone and not your Apple Watch.

I’m sure you’re well aware of the “ping iPhone” feature in the Apple Watch where you can just tap on a button in the Control Center and your iPhone makes a series of beeps to help you find it. However, if you are in a situation where it’s dark and you can’t see where your iPhone is, this Apple Watch trick might come in handy. Open the control center on your watch and long-press the ‘ping iPhone’ button. When you do this, your iPhone will beep and blink the LED flash as well to help you locate it.

Have you ever been in a work meeting and suddenly your watch makes that notification chime? Obviously you can quickly cover the watch to mute the notification, but you can’t really head into the control center and then tap to turn on Silent Mode in order to not have any more disturbances during the meeting, right? Well, luckily for you, there’s a shortcut. Any time you get a notification on your watch, you can just cover the watch with your palm for three seconds and your watch will turn-on silent mode. It will also give a taptic feedback to let you know that silent mode has been turned on. Pretty cool, right?

I know what you’re thinking, the Apple Watch Series 5 has an always on display so we can easily check the time without raising our wrist. True, but not every one has a Series 5 Apple Watch, and if you’re one of the people rocking their Series 3 or 4, you don’t have to necessarily raise your wrist to check the time. Plus, a lot of people prefer disabling the always on display to extend the Series 5’s battery life. When your watch screen (or AOD) is turned off, slightly rotate the digital crown to light the screen up at a low brightness and check the time. You can keep rotating the crown to increase the brightness if you want. By the way, this is also handy if you have turned on theater mode on your watch but you need to check the time without blasting the entire theater with your watch’s screen brightness.

Water Lock locks the screen to prevent it from being activated or flooded by water. Especially handy (and engaged automatically) when you start a swimming activity in the Workout app. But it’s a good idea to use it in the rain or shower, too. However, you’ll have to do this manually. Swipe up from the bottom of the watch face to enter the Control Centre, which includes a number of frequently used controls. Choose the water droplet icon. Turn off Water Lock by rotating the Digital Crown dial. The Water Lock will be disabled. You’ll hear a sort of beeping noise when the speaker vibrates to purge any remaining water.