How to add and use widgets on Apple Watch

Widgets are a feature Apple introduced with watchOS 10. They represent one of the most significant additions to the Apple Watch’s user interface in years. So much so, that you’re going to need to relearn some gestures that may have become second nature, such as swiping up to see the Control Center.

However, the effort is worth it; widgets let you quickly access your favorite apps more easily, no matter what watch face you’re using. You may even wonder how you ever survived without them before.

Widgets on Apple Watch are similar to the widgets you can add to customize your iPhone home screen. They’re small blocks of information from various Apple Watch apps that cover the full width of your watch face and fit two to a screen. Tapping a widget opens the associated app.

The beauty of widgets is that they’re customizable, so you can quickly access the information that’s most important to you. Better yet, they’re part of a feature Apple calls Smart Stack. With the help of machine learning, watchOS 10 will do its best to display the most relevant widgets at a given moment.

For instance, if you’re about to fly, watchOS 10 will display the boarding pass you added to Apple Wallet toward the top of the Smart Stack. You can also manually organize widgets to make the Smart Stack as dynamic or static as you want.

Adding widgets requires a little patience. That’s because the way you access widgets used to be the way that you accessed the Control Center. In watchOS 10, to open the Control Center, you’ll need to press the side button instead. First, to bring up the Smart Stack and your current widgets:

1. Swipe up from any watch face or turn the Digital Crown upwards.
2. You’ll then see a simple watch face and the current date, with your first widget located at the bottom half of the screen.
3. Continue to swipe up or rotate the Digital Crown to see more available widgets.
4. Swipe or rotate the Digital Crown further, and you’ll reach the final widget which contains three small complications icons that you can tap to open their associated apps.
5. Beneath this final widget is an All Apps button. You can tap the button or continue scrolling to see your full app grid or list. This app grid can still be accessed by pressing the digital crown.

By default, the Smart Stack is populated with Apple apps such as News, Weather, Activity, and Mindfulness. You can add and remove widgets, and pin them in place if you want to keep certain ones at the top of the stack. Not all Apple Watch apps support widgets, so some of your apps may not appear in the list of available options.

1. Swipe up from the bottom of your Apple Watch’s display or scroll up using the Digital Crown to access the Smart Stack.
2. Tap and hold the screen until the editing screen appears.

Now, you now have the following options:

• To add a widget, tap the large + (plus) button
• To remove a widget, tap the red – (minus) button
• To pin a widget in a place so that it remains at the top of the Smart Stack, tap the yellow Pin icon
• To edit the complications widget, tap the – (minus) button to remove a complication, then tap the + (plus)
• Tap Done to stop editing

Whilst the new location of Control Center is going to take some getting used to, Apple Watch widgets have the potential to be a serious game changer. You no longer need to choose a watch face based on how many complications slots it has or set up multiple faces to fit in all the complications that you want.

You get the best of both worlds: You can rock that new Snoopy watch face with no complications at all, but still be able to see key information with a single swipe. And for power users, a face such as Modular combined with widgets gives you access to even more apps and complications all from a single watch face.

Widgets are only available in watchOS 10. So ensure you’re running the latest version of Apple’s operating system to get the most of this new feature.