New features in watchOS 3

If you quickly tap the watch face when using the Mickey Mouse or Minnie Mouse watch faces, the watch will speak the time in a Mickey or Minnie voice.

 

Changing watch faces is as simple as an edge to edge swipe to the left or right, which then displays the next watch face.

 

One of the more interesting new features of watchOS 3 is the Control Centre. Just like on the iPhone or iPad, you bring up the Control Centre by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. It shows the battery charge level and various connectivity controls. At the very bottom is the control for the Bluetooth headphones which are used to listen to music stored on the Apple Watch as well as music streamed from your iPhone.

 

The Apple Watch now shows up in Find My iPhone, which can now be used to play a sound on a lost or stolen Apple Watch.

 

An important new feature of watchOS 3 is the emergency calling function. Pressing and holding the side button brings up the power off button and the emergency call button. Once this screen shows up, keep holding the side button for 3 more seconds and the emergency call will be made. In order for emergency responders to be able to find you, your location is sent as part of the emergency call. If you've set up an emergency contacts list, those contacts will be automatically called as soon as the 911 call is finished. If you live in countries with other emergency call numbers, Apple Watch will automatically call the correct number for whatever country you're in at the time.


If what you want to do is turn off the watch, release the side button as soon as this screen appears, then tap the power off button.

 

The watch app of an iPhone on iOS 10 with a paired watch running watchOS 3 has a new feature called Face Gallery. Here you can view every available watch face and customize them just as you like. Customization in the Face Gallery is a lot easier than trying to do it on the watch itself. Tapping on any watch face in the gallery opens the customization page for that watch face.

This screenshot shows just a small fraction of the whole gallery, which scrolls vertically and horizontally.

 

Here's part of the customization page for the Motion watch face.

 

For those who don't like the Time Travel feature whereby you turn the Digital Crown in either direction to advance or retard the time as well as seeing past or future data for supported complications such as the calendar, it can now be turned off in watchOS 3 beta 3. To do this, go to the watch app on your iPhone in the My Watch section. Go down the list of apps until you get to the clock, then tap it and you'll see this page with the new Time Travel switch which is off by default.

 

You're welcome.

 

watchOS 3 Beta 6 was released earlier today. The release notes say it contains improvements and bug fixes.