Apple Watch tips

We've spent a lot of time with the Apple Watch, Apple Watch Series 1 and Apple Watch Series 2. The fruit of our labours is this list of 31 brilliant tips and secret features for the Apple Watch, watchOS 2 and watchOS 3. You'll soon be getting more out of your Apple smartwatch.All of which means that the Apple Watch is full of secret features and unknown potential. In this article we're going to look share all our Apple Watch tips and secrets to help you get more out of your Apple Watch (or Apple Watch Series 1 or Apple Watch Series 2), from vital but relatively well-known interface techniques to obscure tricks for optimising the way apps behave.

We'll cover features introduced from the start, as well as new features added with the important watchOS 2 and watchOS 3 software update . (If you'd like to know about the next major update, read our watchOS 4 rumours and Apple Watch Series 3 articles.)

1. Use the Digital Crown to navigate the OS

When people first started to use the Apple Watch, they found themselves wanting a Home button like the one below the screen  on the iPhone and iPad. But there's already a home button: the Digital Crown. Pressing the Digital Crown performs actions similar to the Home button on your iPhone: tap it once to go back to the Home screen, or press and hold it to activate Siri.

Although there isn't much in the way of multitasking on the Apple Watch,the digital  Crown can also enable something similar. 

If you're using the Apple Watch and want to quickly return to the last app that was used, double-tap the Digital Crown and the last app will be opened automatically. (This also works from the clock face.) Then, once you're finished using that app, you can switch back to the initial app (which is now the 'last-used app') by again double-pressing the Digital Crown.

Like we said, not exactly multitasking, but something similar.

2. Use the Digital Crown to open apps

There are a number of ways you can navigate around the Apple Watch; you just have to find the way that's right for you. For example, apps on the home menu can be opened by tapping the icon, but some people have found that tapping is inaccurate; sometimes you miss and open the app  to the left or right of your desired app. Luckily for them, there's a way around this issue.

To find the app in a crowded home screen, you may need to zoom out using the Digital Crown to find the desired app. Once you've located it, tap near it to zoom in on the area, and then centre the app on the screen. Once it's centred, instead of tapping on it, use the Digital Crown to zoom into it and open it - it's much more accurate, and includes a cool animation when zooming into the watch face.

3. Use (and customise) the app dock on the Watch

The easiest way to open an app on your watch - or a commonly used app, at any rate - is by using the new Dock, added with watchOS 3.

Apple replaced Glances, the app snapshots that were visible when you swiped up on your watch display with a new, fast-launching app Dock accessible by pressing the side button (which used to bring up a shortcut to friends contact details).

Any app can live in the Dock, regardless of whether it's preinstalled or made by a third party. Apps you place there are constantly refreshed, so you can see a live preview when you swipe from side to side in the dock. Tapping on an app from its live preview will launch it instantly (or pretty close to instantly).

You can choose up to 10 apps to place in the Dock. Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, then tap through My Watch > Dock. Tap the Edit option on the top right to move apps into the dock or move them out of the Dock. You can also choose which order they appear in.

4. Keep tabs on Control Centre

Now that Glances are gone, swiping up on the watch face reveals the redesigned Control Centre. From this new view, you'll see how much battery life you have left, plus easy access to Power Reserve if you need to conserve juice.

There's also Airplane Mode, Do Not Disturb, a lock button for locking your watch with its passcode, a Find My iPhone button so your phone will make a sound and make itself more easily discoverable, and an AirPlay button for listening to music from your Apple Watch with wireless headphones or a set of Bluetooth speakers.

And if you're using an Apple Watch Series 2 there will be a water lock too - this turns off the touchscreen so it isn't activated by moving water in the shower or swimming pool. (Rotate the dial to turn this off.)

Control Centre used to be hidden in Glances, which wasn't very convenient. Putting these commonly used settings a swipe away makes them much easier to access. 

5. Improve battery life

How is your Watch's battery performing? The Apple Watch first gen and Apple Watch Series 1 ought to be able to make it through one day's moderate use pretty easily: if you know what you're doing they can make it through most of a second as well.

The Apple Watch Series is good for two days of use between charges and we found that it made it to lunchtime on a third.

If you're not getting these levels of performance, it's worth getting in touch with Apple Support to see if you got a duff model. But there are some simple tricks you can try first. It's possible that you just need to dial down your use of certain particularly power-hungry apps, or that other techniques will improve your watch's battery life.

Some watch faces use up more power  than others; some settings are better for improving battery life. Cutting back on notifications - and encouraging your watch to check in with its paired iPhone for updates less often - are both steps you should try.

6. Choose a new watch face

Apple introduced three new watch faces in watchOS 3: Numerals, a stunningly simple face with clock hands and, you guessed it, numerals; Activity, which puts your rings front and centre on the display in either analog or digital form; and Minnie Mouse to join her pal Mickey.

To add these new faces to your lineup, open the Watch app on your iPhone and tap on Face Gallery in the bottom navigation bar. You can add all of the new faces, if you want, and delete or rearrange the way the faces appear on your watch by tapping the Edit button under My Watch > My Faces in the iOS Watch app.

In watchOS 3, you can still change your watch face using Force Touch (as before). But now you can also simply swipe from edge to edge either left or right on the watch display to see the faces you've loaded on to the device in the iOS Watch app.

If you want to customise a face's colours or complications, you'll still need to use Force Touch.

7. Avoid accidentally changing the watch face

We've heard from a few people who find that they accidentally change watch face without meaning to.

This happens most commonly in the shower, where the warm water can sometimes trick the watch into thinking it's being touched by a fingertip, with the result that you come out of the shower with a load of settings - perhaps including the choice of watch face - inadvertently changed.

But it's also easy to mistakenly swipe to a new face when using the touchscreen for other things.

If you're experiencing the shower problem, the solution is simple: turn on the Water Lock we mentioned earlier, and which we'll look at properly in the next step. This deactivates the touchscreen until switched off, and thereby prevents functions or settings being messed with by the meddlesome water.

But if you only use one watch face and would rather not have the watch switch to others by mistake, why not delete all the other faces from your My Faces list? Open the Watch app on your companion iPhone and, in the My Watch tab, tap on Edit next to the My Faces list. Tap the red circle next to the unwanted faces, then tap Done. With no other faces to choose from, swiping horizontally across the watch screen won't change the face.

They're not gone forever - you can go into the Face Gallery section of the Watch app at any time and tap Add to bring them back again.

8. Rename your Apple Watch

If your name is David, for instance, and you happen to get hold of two Apple Watches, and you decide to have them both paired to the same iPhone at the same time, you may find yourself in the annoying situation of not knowing which "David's Apple Watch" is which. Not that we're speaking from experience or anything.

One solution is to use a different face on each watch, but if you'd rather keep your favourite on both, a better solution is to rename one of the watches to "David's Apple Watch Series 2" or, better still, "Watchy McWatchface".

Renaming your Apple is easy once you know how, but the option is strangely well hidden. Open the Watch app on your iPhone, make sure you're in the My Watch tab, then tap General > About > Name and type in a new name, then tap Done.

9. Make your Watch waterproof with Water Lock

FOR APPLE WATCH SERIES 2 ONLY.

As briefly discussed already, Water Lock is a new feature, added in watchOS 3 with the improved water resistance of the Apple Watch Series 2 in mind, that locks the touchscreen to stop it being activated by moving water. It's very handy (and activated automatically) when you do a swimming routine in the Workout app, but it's also a good idea to turn it on manually in the shower.

Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to bring up the Control Centre, with a range of commonly used controls. Tap the little water droplet icon to turn on Water Lock.

To turn Water Lock off again, rotate the Digital Crown dial. Water Lock will be deactivated, and you'll hear a noise - that's the watch's speaker vibrating to clear any remaining water out of the speaker cavity. As we said, Water Lock is turned on automatically if you start a swimming workout. But if you start another workout - a run, say - and then it starts to rain heavily, it's easy to activate the feature from within the Workout app. Swipe in from the left and you'll see the usual options to pause or stop the workout, but there will also be a droplet icon to turn on Water Lock. The workout will continue, but the touchscreen will be desensitised, so you'll need to rotate the dial before using any onscreen functions.

In fact, we've never encountered rain sufficiently heavy to activate the watch's screen, but we do often use this feature when we run while wearing a jacket; it stops the sleeve of the jacket from accidentally pausing the workout, changing app or worse.

10. Change volume on AirPods

If you open the Now Playing app on your Apple Watch while listening to a pair of AirPods, you can change the volume using the Digital Crown dial. Handy!

(To open Now Playing, tap the side button, swipe to the correct face and tap the app - if it's not in the dock you can change this by opening the Watch app on the companion iPhone and going to My Watch > Dock.)

Even better, if you've got an Apple Watch Series 2 (this feature doesn't seem to work with other models, for some reason), it's possible to change the volume of the AirPods even if the watch screen is off. Open the Now Playing app, then let the screen dim, and you'll find you can turn the dial and change the volume without activating raise to wake.

Our thanks to Martin Keen, who spotted this neat feature!

11. Remember to Breathe

watchOS 3 bought with it a new built in app called Breathe. Its purpose is mindfulness: the app is designed to guide you through relaxation sessions so you'll give more thought to your mental health, which often gets the short end of the stick when talking about wellness.

You can customise Breathe in the Watch app on your paired iPhone. Make sure you're in the My Watch tab and then scroll down and tap Breathe. Choose how often you want reminders to breathe throughout the day and how many breaths per minute is most comfortable. You can also adjust Breathe's haptics, the vibrations that will walk you through each session.

Breathe's reminders can become slightly annoying, but just like Stand, you can turn them off entirely if you're committed to having no chill.

12. Use your iPhone to unlock your Apple Watch

Whenever you first put on or remove your Apple Watch, you're prompted to enter your passcode (if you set one up, that is) to gain access to the Apple Watch. Granted, it doesn't take very long to tap in your passcode but for some people (us included) it’s a fiddly process with tiny buttons that we tend to miss on the first go. Thankfully, there's a workaround without needing to disable the passcode and make things easier for potential Apple Watch thieves.

When you initially set up your Apple Watch, you were asked whether you wanted to unlock  your Apple Watch using your iPhone. If you selected yes, simply unlock your iPhone when you're prompted for your Apple Watch password and it'll unlock your Apple Watch too. The process is made even easier with TouchID too. If you didn't enable the setting initially but want to now, don't worry - where there's a will, there's a way.

Simply open the Apple Watch companion app on your iPhone with your Apple Watch connected and navigate to the Passcode menu. From here, all you need to do is toggle the 'Unlock with iPhone' option and you'll enable the feature. It's also worth noting that if you wanted to disable the feature in future, just toggle the option off.

13. Use your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac

Apple's signature synchronicity between its devices comes into play with watchOS 3 and macOS Sierra. You can now use your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac  no password necessary.

Take these steps first. Make sure your Mac and Apple Watch are both signed into the same iCloud account and enable a passcode on your watch if you haven't already. On your Mac, click through the following settings: System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General. Enable "Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac."

If you have two-step verification turned on, you'll need to switch to two-factor authentication instead, otherwise you'll find yourself running into a wall of frustration. You can see which security method you're using by signing into your Apple ID account.

To turn off two-step verification and enable two-factor authentication

14. How to take screenshots on an Apple Watch

Taking a screenshot on an Apple Watch - capturing a static image  of whatever's on the screen at a given moment, in other words, so you can send it other people or post it on a popular technology website - used to be so easy. You just press the Side Button and the Digital Crown at the same time, and the screenshot would pop up in the Photos apps of the paired iPhone.

But since the launch of iOS 10 and watchOS 3, Apple has set things so that Apple Watch screen shots are disabled by default - to be fair, we've found ourselves taking lots of accidental screenshots over the past few years, and the Side Button is far more in demand these days, now that it gives you access to the app picker tray.

If you want to re-enable screenshots, open the Watch app on the paired iPhone and (in the My Watch tab - check the bottom left) scroll down and tap General. Scroll down again and tap the slider next to Enable Screenshots so it turns green.

Now you'll be able to use the old screenshot technique again: press the Side Button and Digital Crown at the same time, then look in Photos on the iPhone for the completed screenshot.

15. Use your Apple Watch to hit your fitness targets

The Activity app, as its name suggests, tracks your physical activity: the more you move around, the more you raise your heart rate, and the less you sit on your bum, the better your progress towards three daily targets.

If you're finding it hard to hit the Move target, you can always lower the target - it's the only one of the three that is user-customisable. When you're in the Activity app (it doesn't matter which ring), do a firm or Force press on the watch screen and you'll see the option to Change Move Goal. (You can also pull up a weekly summary from this screen.) This does apply to today's target, so you can always lower the goal in an 'about to miss out on an achievement' emergency.

But if you desperately want to hit today's target without cheating - sorry, I mean adjusting your goals - there are plenty of ways to burn through those last few calories (and earn the Exercise minutes while you're at it) before you run out of time. Above all, don't assume you need to do a full-on workout or even go outside.

Comparatively static activities can work really efficiently, as long as you've moving around a little and getting tired - I find practising forward-defensives with a child's cricket bat curiously effective (if embarrassing), presumably because it involves steps forward and back and exercises lots of body parts. Conversely, doing the baseball mini game on Wii Sports seems far less effective, presumably because my feet hardly move. Jogging on the spot, provided it's fairly vigorous jogging on the spot, is currently my go-to method of topping up unburned calories at the end of the day.

For the Stand total, bear in mind that just standing for a minute isn't enough to hit the mark for any given hour. You need to move around a little in order for the watch to notice. Walking down to the kitchen and making a cup of tea ought to be enough. But I've found that when padding round the house in socks or slippers (especially on carpet), it sometimes fails to pick up the steps, or struggles to pick it up for a while.

If you're really desperate to hit the target you could put shoes on or go and walk in the kitchen or just jump up and down for a bit, but try to remember that by sitting less you're seeing the health benefits whether you win the 'game' or not.

16. Track your runs more accurately

Neither the first-gen Apple Watch nor the Apple Watch Series 1 have got GPS, which means they can't track your location when they're out of Bluetooth range of their partner iPhone. This places a limit on the devices' ability to track your runs: if there's no iPhone to piggyback GPS off, the watch isn't actually tracking how far you've gone - it's just counting your steps and guessing.

But don't despair, because a non-GPS Apple Watch's guesswork can get reasonably accurate - not accurate enough for someone training for the Olympics, perhaps, but sufficient for most of the rest of us - if you put a little time into 'training' it. All you need to do is go for a run with both Apple Watch and iPhone. (The iPhone just needs to be in Bluetooth range, switched on and not in Airplane Mode; it doesn't need to be in a specific app.) Twenty minutes ought to do it, although the more time you put in, the more accurate it will get, within reason.

The watch uses the phone's GPS to produce a more accurate record of the run (or walk, for that matter), but at the same time its cunning machine brain is also counting the steps and combining the data to learn your stride length. Next time you run without the phone, the watch will be more accurate than previously: maybe not quite as accurate as when it's got GPS (if you want that level of accuracy, you need to plump for the GPS-equipped Apple Watch Series 2), but you might be pleasantly surprised.

17. Share your Activity rings

Now that Apple is doubling down on its commitment to the Apple Watch's health and fitness features (see the brand-new Series3 for more evidence), it's finally adding social features to the Activity app. Activity-sharing on the Apple Watch allows you to see your friends' daily progress in meeting their activity goals, from workout details to their rings. You can send positive messages to encourage a friend who needs a boost from the watch Activity app, or if you're feeling competitive, some prewritten snark is just a tap away.

Activity-sharing isn't turned on by default: you have to invite friends to share their data with you and wait for them to reply. This is in the iOS Activity app, not the iOS Apple Watch app.

18. Take photos with your watch

Apple preinstalls a Camera app with the Apple Watch. That might seem odd, because no currently available Apple Watch model comes with a camera of any kind. In fact, this app enables you to use the watch as a remote shutter trigger for your iPhone camera. It's a handy feature to have.

Open the camera app on your Apple Watch and it will automatically open the Camera app on the paired iPhone. Prop up the iPhone in a nice vantage point (perhaps use one of these lovely iPhone camera tripods?) while checking the shot is right on your Apple Watch. When you're happy, you can tap the white circle on the watch screen to take a photo, or hit the '3s' button to use a three-second delay. The latter is useful when you want to take - and be in - a group family photo and not be looking down at your watch at the moment the shutter goes off.

19. Use Music/Now Playing Glance to take photos

So much for remote-triggering shots using Apple's own Camera app. You might be thinking this feature can't be replicated with third-party apps that don't have an Apple Watch companion app, right? Wrong.

Even though you won't have an image preview on your Apple Watch like you do when you use the Camera app, there's a way to manually trigger photos on popular apps like Snapchat that use the volume button to take photos.

Simply open the app and get your shot ready, then swipe up on your Apple Watch to access Glances, and namely the Now Playing (Music) Glance. Once you've accessed the Glance, simply turn the Digital Crown to change the volume on the iPhone and, in turn, activate the camera shutter.

20. Make your iPhone flash when using Ping iPhone

Now, this might be two tips in one for Apple Watch users that weren't already aware of a Find my iPhone style 'Ping' that you can activate to, y'know, find your iPhone. If you're at home and can't find your iPhone anywhere (we've all been there, right?), you can simply access the Settings Glance from your Apple Watch and tap the iPhone icon at the bottom of the screen. This will send a signal to your iPhone and make it 'ping' loudly, allowing you to easily find it. A handy feature to have right?

But some people need something more than just a ping - and of course Apple has already thought of a work around. If you can't find your iPhone by pinging it alone, tap and hold the ping iPhone icon on your Apple Watch to activate the cameras LED flash as well as the ping noise, which will hopefully give you a better idea of where your lost device is.

21. Dismiss notifications without removing them from the Notification Centre

One of our favourite features of the Apple Watch is one that largely isn't being mentioned by any other publication. When you get a notification on your iPhone, it's displayed on your Apple Watch - obviously. But did you notice that once a notification has been dismissed on your Apple Watch, it's also dismissed from your iPhone's notification centre? While it means you can keep your Notification Centre from becoming too cluttered, it can also come as a downside with regards to message notifications.

Say, for example, I receive a WhatsApp message notification on my Apple Watch from my friend while I'm at work and can't reply to him straight away. If I dismiss the notification from my Apple Watch, it'll also dismiss it from my iPhone - but in doing so, I completely forget that he has messaged me and I end up ignoring his message for hours. Not ideal, is it?

There's a simple work around available, though - whenever you've received a full screen notification that you don't want to dismiss from the notification centre, simply press the Digital Crown to return to what you were doing without removing it.

22. Quickly clear all notifications from the Notification Centre

If you follow our earlier advice regarding not dismissing notifications on your Apple Watch, one side effect may be a large number of notifications in your Apple Watch Notification Centre, available by swiping down from the watch face. Although we might not want to clear important messages/notifications, we don’t want you to drown in a sea of annoying notifications either.

If you find yourself in a situation like the one described above, there are two options available to you: manually clear  each notification by swiping left on it and tapping 'Clear', or clear all notifications at once. To clear all your notifications at once, simply access the Notification Centre, force touch and tap Clear All. This will clear all notifications from both your Apple Watch and iPhone.

23. Let Shazam tell you all the music it heard today

Apple relies on developers to create third party apps to make the Apple Watch experience as great as it can be, and that’s what the developers of Shazam did. How many moments have you been out and about and heard a song that you like, but weren't sure about what it was called? Shazam allows you to ID the song you can hear, straight from your wrist - but that's not all it can do.

From within the Shazam for Apple Watch app, simply force touch to bring up a new menu. From here you can select "Start Auto Shazam" which will constantly listen to your environment and identify any songs that you hear as you go about your day. Then, it curates all those songs into a playlist in Shazam that you can then export into Spotify. Even though it'll probably use a lot of battery power, it sounds like a cool feature that could come in handy on nights out!

24. Control Spotify using your Apple Watch

The Music app for the Apple Watch is impressive, giving you full access to your entire iPhone music library and letting you browser  by song, artist, album etc. However what if, like us, you don’t use the stock Music app on your iPhone and instead use a third party option like Spotify or Rdio? There’s still a way to get (limited) control of your music via the Apple Watch. 

Instead of opening the Music app to access and control the music stored on your iPhone, first open Spotify/Rdio/any other music player on your iPhone and start playing music. Once music is playing, swipe up on your Apple Watch to access Glances and find the "Now Playing" glance. It looks just like the Music app, but allows you to control the music that’s playing regardless of where it's coming from. You can pause, play, skip forward and back and control the volume right from the Apple Watch - the next best thing until developers start adding dedicated companion apps for their music players.

25. Turn off the Apple Watch display with your palm

Have you ever finished using the Apple Watch, lowered your wrist and noticed the display doesn't turn off? Even though it's not a big deal and it'll automatically turn off after a few seconds of inactivity, it'd be handy to know how to manually turn the display off, right? It'd come in handy, especially if you've disabled wrist detection to save battery power. Well, you're in luck, as there is a way to manually turn off the display; and it's a lot easier than you may think. 

Once you've finished using your Apple Watch and want to turn the display off, simply place the palm of your hand over the display. Once you move your hand away, you'll notice the display has turned off. It has other uses, too - if you receive a phone call on your Apple Watch, place your palm over the screen to silence the call.

26. Let Siri know when you've finished talking

The use of Siri on the Apple Watch makes laborious tasks like setting alarms much easier to accomplish, simply by telling Siri to set the alarm for you. It's also an integral part of the messages app, being used to dictate your reply before converting it to text ready to send. But Siri on the Apple Watch is still young, and has a lot to learn - like when to stop listening to your dictation.

We've found that when we've used Siri to dictate replies to texts, it isn't quite sure when to stop listening to us and will start to transcribe somebody speaking close to you. However, we've found that tapping the screen after you've finished with your reply will stop Siri from listening, and will transcribe what has been said. 

It's not just useful for dictation, though, as the audio clip can also be sent as a voice note via iMessage on the occasion that Siri doesn't transcribe accurately. Therefore tapping when you've finished speaking makes sense, as you don't want to send your friend a voice note with 10 seconds of silence at the end, do you?

27. Organise your Apple Watch home screen

It's a good idea to organise the apps on your Apple Watch home screen. With the combination of a small screen and a large number of apps installed, it could become frustrating trying to find apps that you want to use. Now, the quickest way to rearrange your Apple Watch home screen is to tap and hold the app icon until it wiggles, much like with the iPhone. Once everything starts to wiggle, you can drag the icon to its new position - it's also where you can uninstall any third party Apple Watch apps.

There's also another way to organise your Apple Watch home screen, namely by using the Apple Watch companion app on your iPhone. By opening the companion app and accessing the App Layout menu, you can get an overview of the layout of your apps. From here, you can easily rearrange them by tapping, holding and dragging them without being hindered by the small display of the Apple Watch. 

28. Set up the Apple Watch on your right wrist (Lefties pay attention!)

The next tip is for the lefties among us - tired of wearing the Apple Watch on your left wrist? Tried it and doesn't play well with the wrist-raising detection? Don't worry; you can switch to your right wrist once you've tweaked your Apple Watch settings in the Apple Watch companion app on your iPhone.

Once you've opened the app, simply navigate to General > Watch Orientation. From here you can select which wrist the Apple Watch will be worn on, as well as the Digital Crown’s placement. By selecting the correct wrist and Digital Crown placement, it helps the Watch to know when to wake up the display as well as which way to orient the screen.

Lefties have a choice to make - you can either have the Digital Crown facing away from your hand, or wear it "upside down" with the side button above the Digital Crown. Whichever you choose, it doesn't really have much of an impact on your experience with the watch. 

29. Enable 'Prominent Haptic' for a pre-announcement of notifications

The decision to include a Taptic engine within the Apple Watch was welcomed with open arms by the tech community as a whole. We've all had bad experiences with traditional vibration motors - you've had your phone on silent and are in an important meeting when you receive a text, but the vibration is so loud that every person in the room is aware that you've just received a text. Haptic feedback isn't anything like that.

Thanks to the Taptic engine, instead of feeling a huge buzz on your wrist when you receive a notification, you'll instead feel a gentle 'tap' on the wrist to alert you. However, some people have commented that they barely feel the haptic feedback when they're out and about - and this tip is for those people.

Prominent Haptic is a pre-announcement vibration that’s stronger than the standard Apple Watch vibration to alert you of an incoming notification. To activate this, open the Apple Watch companion app on your iPhone and navigate to 'Sounds & Haptics'. From here, you can customise the sounds and haptic feedback of your Apple Watch, and more importantly, toggle on the ‘Prominent Haptic’ feature. From then on, you’ll feel two vibrations whenever you get a notification – the pre-announcement vibration, and then the notification vibration.  

30. Answer calls on your iPhone using the Apple Watch

Even though we've been using the phone feature of the Apple Watch since we got our hands on it, we missed this feature for weeks. When you receive a call on your iPhone, you have the option of answering or declining the call, right? Wrong. There are other options available: you just have to use the Digital Crown to scroll down and access them. The first option is to send a quick reply, which will disconnect the call and present you with pre-set messages such as "Can't talk, what's up?" to send to the caller.

The second option however is far more helpful. Even though the Phone feature on the Apple Watch is cool, the speaker isn’t nearly loud enough to be able to be used properly in a public environment - it's just too quiet to hear the call. So, in those situations you can use the Digital Crown to scroll down and select 'Answer on iPhone'.

This not only answers the call on your iPhone, but also puts the recipient on hold until you have a chance to get your phone from your pocket/bag and unlock it. This negates any confusion on the recipient's end, as they won't hear you rustling around in your bag looking for your phone. 

31. Share your location from the Apple Watch

There's nothing more annoying than travelling to a meet-up with your friends when they keep texting you to ask where you are - especially when you're using an Apple Watch and can feel every text on your wrist. You have a few options here: ignore them, activate Do not Disturb mode on your Watch or tell them where you are. The latter seems to be the easiest option, but not when you're unsure of where you are, and that's where our last tip comes in. 

All you need to do is open the Messages app on your Apple Watch and select a thread to reply to, and instead of dictating a reply, force touch the screen and select 'Send Location'. This will grab your iPhone's current location and send it to everyone in the thread - which in this scenario is all the friends you're off to meet. They can load your location from within the Messages app and easily see where you are. Simple, really.