Apple Watch Series 9: Some Tips and Hidden Features

Most of these tips will apply as long as the watch is running watch OS 10, that is any Apple watch from the series 4 and later.

Let’s get started, when you scroll the crown or swipe up from the watch face it’s now going to show the smile 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 you can easily see how much power you have left without needing to go to the control center. So on this tile with the three circles we’re going to need to press and hold and then I’m just going to remove one of those ones that’s existing there, then press the plus icon and then find the battery icon right there and hit done and there’s the battery percentage.

Double tap is that gesture that lets you do this to control the series 9 and Ultra 2, now it works with lots of first party apps like messages, timers and music player, but some third-party messaging apps will also work so for example if you get a slack notification you’ll just need to raise your wrist, double tap and it’s going to bring up the same voice dictation as the first party app now you can also customize Double Taps so the gesture SK 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. There’s two types of people in the world the “play pause” people and the “skip”. 

While we’re talking music not exactly hidden but definitely not very well known the series 9 and Ultra 2 watches actually comes with double the storage capacity of earlier Apple watches (about 64 GB) which means you can put a lot of music on this so you’re 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 watch OS 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 tips like being able to set your clock ahead a couple of minutes which is really helpful if you are always running late this is actually a taptic time so if you’re stuck at the movies, in a meeting or any situation where you can’t really look at your watch’s face you can actually press and hold on the watch with two fingers to be able to have the time buzzed on your wrist. 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 will see this activity popup on your screen, 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. Just 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 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 the Bluetooth icon and it will ping 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 finder to locate your phone, you can see just how far away it is you can also ping your watch from your phone by going to settings, control center then add “ping my watch” swipe to open the control center and tap on it. If you do misplace your phone a lot turn on “Notify when left behind” just open up “find my iPhone”, then go to devices and tap the name of your phone and then ensure “notify when left behind” is turned on. So anytime you leave your phone behind and walk away with the watch it will give you a notification on your wrist.

Going to the Voice Assistance aspect, specifically for the Series 9 and the Ultra 2 it now works offline so you don’t need to be connected to the internet to able to do things like starting a workout or setting up a timer, asking for Health Data from the watch without having to dig more through that awkward Health app on your phone. You can also log Health Data like record blood pressure and things like body temperature, but to get this you do need to turn on Health Access first on both your phone and your watch. So first, on your iPhone go into settings, go down to health and then find data access and devices, find your voice assistant the name starts with “s” and then make sure this Access Health Data toggle is turned on, now that’s activated. Let’s switch to the watch and go to settings then find Health apps and services again, the Voice Assistant starting with “s” and Access Health Data make sure that one is switched on as well and for all this to work you’ll also need to be running iOS 17.2 on the phone and watch OS 10.2 or later on the watch.

And here’s another fun 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” to turn on the flashlight and say “Nox” to turn it off. Now 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 Wi-Fi network as the Apple TV and it also works with Roku you just need to download the Roku app on your iPhone first and then on the watch it should be automatically installed, open it up and go to the same control options.

If you have a Series 8 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 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 there’s so many more cool things you can do on the Apple watch and this just scratches the surface.