Apple launched Watch Series 4 last year and the wearable device has been so successful that it’s considered to be the best smartwatch available on the market right now. Apple is usually dominating the smartphone market but Watch Series 4 has helped Apple take over the wearable market as well. One of the primary reasons why Watch Series 4 has been so successful is because it runs on watchOS 5.
watchOS 5 is Apple’s latest operating system update for the wearable device and it comes with a plethora of features. In fact, watchOS 5 is bundled with so many features that most Watch Series 4 users don’t even know about all of them. Well, here is where we come in because today we are going to present the top ten watchOS 5 tips & tricks that all Apple fans need to learn if they want to become power users. Without any further ado, let’s get into it.
watchOS 5 – Top Ten Essential Tips & Tricks
#1 Group Notifications
Apple’s operating systems have had a big problem with notifications in the past. Fortunately, Apple decided to fix this problem in 2018 when it introduced group notifications to both watchOS 5 and iOS 12. Therefore, enabling grouped notifications on an iPhone will also make them appear under the same panel on watchOS 5.
#2 Disable Notifications
Since we previously mentioned grouped notifications, we need to let everyone who is a fan of watchOS 5 know that they can also quickly disable them in a couple of simple steps. Disabling notifications on watchOS 5 can be done by swiping left on a notification and then by tapping on the “Ellipses” button. After this is done, all that watchOS 5 users need to do is to enable the “Turn off on Apple Watch” option. This will help you watchOS 5 users get rid of notifications from annoying apps.
#3 Track Your Sleep
One of the coolest features that Apple introduced with watchOS 5 is the ability to track the user’s sleep pattern. While this might not be a built-in feature like Fitbit and Garmin smartwatches offers, watchOS 5’s sleep tracking option is still a powerful feature that lets users get information about their sleeping patterns.
#4 Interact with Siri
Apple’s main focus for watchOS 5 was to improve the features that Siri brings to the table. As everyone already knows, Siri doesn’t match up too well against the likes of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. However, Apple is not ready to give up on Siri yet and it keeps improving the personal AI with new features. Therefore, we advise all watchOS 5 users to try and interact more with the personal AI because Siri can now offer lots of useful features such as automatically displaying the heart rate after a workout or inform the user about the latest news on their sports team or artist.
#5 Podcasts are Now Available Online
Podcasts are taking over the world and there’s no doubt about this. What’s great about podcasts is the fact that they can not only entertain people but also teach them important things about life. Nonetheless, Apple knows that more and more people are listening to podcasts and this is why it made it possible for all watchOS 5 users to buffer a podcast on their smartwatches and then listen to them while offline.
#6 Give Grayscale a Try
watchOS 5 is equipped with a beautiful UI (user interface) that is both complex and user friendly at the same time. On the downside of things, watchOS 5 has brought in lots of colorful apps and options that might make it annoying for users to look at the UI. Luckily, the UI can be simplified and the colors will go away after users enable Grayscale. This feature can be enabled by following the next steps My Watch – General – Accessibility – Enable the Grayscale toggle.
#7 Find Your iPhone
Losing an iPhone is always bad! Not only are you losing an expensive device, but your phone contacts, notes, apps and family pictures will be gone as well. Fortunately, watchOS 5 has a solution for this issue. All Apple Watches can send a pinging noise to the iPhone to make it easier to find the device. This feature can be accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the screen and then by tapping on the icon that looks just like a ringing iPhone (pictured above). Additionally, holding a finger pressed on the icon will make the iPhone’s flash light turn on.
#8 Customize the Watch Face
If you ever feel like your Apple Watch looks basic and that everyone has the same UI layout, then you should be pleased to know that the Watch Face can be customized. To make things even better, customizing the Watch Face is rather simple and all that users need to in order to customize is to press and hold in the center of the UI and then tap on the “Customize” option. Now, the only thing left to do is to select the widgets that should appear on appear on the Watch Face such as the music app for example.
#9 Fast Silence
The faster way to silence an Apple Watch is to cover it with your hand. This feature can be enabled by following the next steps Watch – tap on Sound & Haptics – Enable the “Cover to Mute” option. We advise all Apple Watch users to enable this feature because it will prove to be quite handy.
#10 Taking Screenshots
The last tip for watchOS 5 that we want to end our list with is how to take screenshots. All of Apple’s Watch Series wearables can snap a screenshot of the main screen when the user presses the two buttons on the right of the smartwatch. In addition, this feature needs to be first enabled by heading over to General and then tapping on “Enable Screenshots”.