Speaker 1: There's an Apple watch on your wrist and you want to make the most out of it, you've come to the right place. As I've put together some tips, secrets and not so secret features to check out whether you have a series nine, an ultra two, or an earlier Apple watch, most of these tips will apply as long as your watch is running. Watch OS 10 that is any Apple watch from the series four and later. Okay, let's go.
Speaker 1: When you scroll the crown or swipe up from the watch face, it's now going to show the smart [00:00:30] stack. So you can do things like pinning widgets to the top. So it's always going to show the things that you want to see first. Just press and hold and then tap that pin icon so it appears at the top. But one customization that I find super helpful is to actually have a battery widget so I can see how much power I have left without needing to go to the control center. So on this tile with the three circles, we are going to need to press and hold and then I'm just going to remove one of those ones that's existing there. Press the plus icon and then find this battery [00:01:00] icon right here and hit done. And there's my battery percentage. Double tap is that gesture that lets you do this to control the series nine and ultra two.
Speaker 1: Now it works with lots of first party apps like messages, timers and music, but some third party messaging apps will also work. So for example, if I get a Slack notification, I'll just need to raise my wrist double tap, and it's going to bring up the same voice to text dictation as the first party app. Now you can also customize double tap so the gesture skips [00:01:30] tracks rather than play pause when you're listening in the first party music app. So we'll need to go down to settings, then gestures go into double tap and then change that play pause, which is on by default to skip, but I already changed it because there's two types of people in the world. The play pause people and the skip people. And I'm definitely number two. And while we're talking music, not exactly hidden, but definitely not very well known.
Speaker 1: The series nine and ultra two actually come with double the storage of earlier Apple watches. That's 64 [00:02:00] gigabytes and that means you can put a lot of music on this. You used to be able to do this to swipe back and forth between the different clock faces that you chose on the Apple Watch, but that was actually disabled in the first editions of watchOS 10. Fortunately you can get it back with the latest update to 10.2. You'll just need to go to settings, then clock and then swipe to switch, watch face while you're here. Check out some other useful things like being able to set your clock ahead a couple of minutes, which is really, really helpful [00:02:30] if you are always running late and an oldie. But a goodie is actually tactic time. So if you're stuck at the movies or in a meeting in a situation where you can't really look at your watch face, you can actually press and hold on the watch with two fingers to be able to have the time buzzed on your wrist.
Speaker 1: If you're a cyclist, your iPhone can act as a bike computer. Just start an indoor or outdoor cycling workout from the watch. And then on your iPhone you'll this activity [00:03:00] pop up on your screen like so tap it and then you'll see all of your workout metrics front and center on the big screen. So you can put your phone on the handlebars and ride a bit safer. Another super helpful tool for cyclists is connecting a Bluetooth accessory like power meter pedals or a cadence sensor to your watch. Go to settings Bluetooth and then scroll down to health devices. Tap on your device and depending on what you connect, you'll now see metrics like cadence and speed [00:03:30] plus your functional threshold power, which is the maximum amount of intensity you can maintain for an hour. You probably know you can open the control center, tap this icon and it'll pinging your phone if it's within Bluetooth range. But press and hold it and your flashlight will go off if your phone is locked. But if you have the watch paired to an iPhone 15, it's going to use precision finding to locate your phone so you can see just how far away it is. You can also pinging your watch from your phone. Go to settings, control center, [00:04:00] then add pinging my watch. Swipe to open the control center and tap.
Speaker 1: If you misplace your phone a lot, turn on notify. When left behind, just open up find my on the iPhone. Then go to devices, tap the name of your phone and then make sure notify when left behind is turned on. So if you leave your phone behind and walk away with the watch, it will give you a notification on your wrist. Alright, voice assistant time. I won't say the name of it so I don't accidentally start yours. Two [00:04:30] tips specifically for the series nine and the ultra two. So it now works offline, so you don't need to be connected to do things like start a workout or set a timer, start a workout
Speaker 2: Starting your workout.
Speaker 1: And number two, you can now ask for health data from the watch so there's no more digging through that awkward health app on your phone. Things like, what's my blood oxygen
Speaker 2: As of 6:04 AM it was 97%
Speaker 1: [00:05:00] Or how many steps did I take Today?
Speaker 2: You've taken 4,720 steps today.
Speaker 1: You can also log health data, like record my blood pressure as a hundred twenty seventy six
Speaker 2: Done.
Speaker 1: And things like My body temperature is 98.6 degrees
Speaker 2: Done.
Speaker 1: But to get this, you do need to turn on health access first on both your phone and your watch. So first, pull out your iPhone, [00:05:30] go into settings, go down to health, and then find data access and devices. Find your voice assistant. The name starts with SI am not going to say it to not accidentally start yours. And then make sure this access health data toggle is turned on. Now that's activated. Let's switch to the watch. Go to settings, then find health. Then apps and services, again, the voice assistant starting with S [00:06:00] and access health data. Make sure that one is switched on as well. And for this all to work, you'll also need to be running iOS 17.2 on the phone and watchOS 10.2 or later on the watch. And here's a fun bonus trick that works on all Apple watches. So you can turn on the flashlight with just your voice without saying that whole phrase like turn on the flashlight, just say Lumos,
Speaker 2: It's on now
Speaker 1: Or flashlight,
Speaker 2: It's on now.
Speaker 1: And [00:06:30] turn it off, Knox,
Speaker 2: It's off. Now
Speaker 1: You might already know that you can use the watch as a remote for your phone's camera, but you can also control your Apple TV from your wrist. Find the remote app and then select your device and swipe or tap to control it. Just make sure that you're on the same wifi network as the Apple TV and bonus. It also works with Roku. You just need to download the Roku app on your iPhone first and then on the watch it should automatically install, open it up and voila [00:07:00] the same control options. That's pretty neat. Launching a shortcut from the clock face is one of my favorite things to do and it's so customizable. So we are going to grab our iPhones and open up the Shortcuts app to create almost any sequence of actions that you possibly could want. One of my favorites is to navigate home from wherever I am.
Speaker 1: So let's go make that one. Alright, first I'm going to hit the plus icon at the top right hand corner to create a new shortcut. Then I am going to go to the apps and [00:07:30] actions setting. Once I swipe up from the bottom here to find maps, that's how I want to navigate. Then within this menu, I am going to say Open directions. Then it's going to say Open driving directions from my current location to whatever destination I choose using maps. And you can change driving to anything like walking, biking, or transit, which is kind of cool if you're not always in the car. So I want to set driving directions from my current location to [00:08:00] home. So for obvious reasons, I'm not going to show you where I live, so let's just pretend I live in the park. Okay, hit Golden Gate Park. We'll hit done.
Speaker 1: And there you have my shortcut is all created. Now before we exit out of this, make sure we tap that eye icon at the bottom of the screen and then show on Apple Watch. Very, very important, activate that. Hit done. I'm going to give my shortcut a snazzy new name. Let's [00:08:30] rename that to go home. Hit done, shortcut created to the watch. So now I'm on my watch. I'm going to choose a spare complication slot and put the shortcut on that. So complications, let's take out the compass. We're going to scroll down until we find shortcuts. There we go. Now we should be able to see a of the shortcuts that I've created and go home. The one that I just made [00:09:00] is right here. Tap that, go back into the watch face, hit that. Hit run. I got directions from wherever I am back home. I love this shortcut. If you have a series eight or later with a temperature sensor and you track your sleep, the health app will chart your temperature variations over time, but it's not giving you the exact numbers. So if you are curious about what that temperature readout actually is, just go to settings, then health, [00:09:30] then health data, body measurements, wrist temperature. And again, you can see the exact readings of your wrist temperature as it was tracking your sleep in a nice list. No more weird chart.
Speaker 1: There's so many more cool things you can do on the Apple Watch and this just scratches the surface. If you do want some extra tips, please drop me a comment down below. And if you already knew these, you get a gold star and may your watch be blessed with [00:10:00] extra battery life. See you.
