Laying out your Apple Watch apps on your Apple Watch’s Home screen properly is an important factor in your efficiency and, ultimately, contributes to your overall satisfaction. Apple Watch is, after all, Apple’s most personal device, and the Home screen is a place where you can really personalize your Watch exactly to your needs.
As with determining which apps earn the right to be a part of your Glances, and in what order, the Home screen on Apple Watch is an intensely personal thing. No two Watches that aren’t straight out of the box will look the same on the Home screen or in Glances.
We’ve been tinkering for two weeks now with various methods of app layouts, so we’ll share one (below) that we’re liking well enough currently. It’s a work in progress, especially as we’re testing so many Apple Watch apps right now.
If you have a link to a screenshot of your Apple Watch app layout either from the Apple Watch itself or from the Apple Watch app on iPhone, you can post its URL (ends in .png or .jpg) in the comments below or email the image to us at webmaster@macdailynews.com and we’ll add the most interesting ones to this post.
(On Apple Watch take a screenshot by pressing the Digital Crown/Home button and the Side button simultaneously. On iPhone, press the Home and the Sleep/Wake buttons simultaneously.)
MacDailyNews Note: If this is too soon, fret not, we’ll repost this down the road as more people get their Apple Watches and can share their layouts.
MacDailyNews Readers’ submitted screenshots:
Steve says: I had a bunch more apps but made a decision to get rid of everything I suspected I would never use. I’m sure I’ll add more as more great apps hit the App Store, but I will keep only 3 apps along the top and 3 along the bottom, with the rest going side to side, expanding evenly, and organized as much as possible by type. Everything I use most is directly accessible from the watch without having to navigate. The very bottom is organized the same way as my iPhone.
I’m thinking there are too many apps on your watch. I’d like to see a screen shot in a couple of months to see if the watch apps are pared down a bit.
If you’re talking about MacDailyNews’ screenshot, they explained above: “Especially as we’re testing so many Apple Watch apps right now.”
The trick to Apple Watch Apps…
1. Do NOT install all possible apps. You do not want to swamp your UI, you will actually make things less usable. You want to have only the apps you need, must have. The only way to do that is to tell it, not to install any apps, then one by one, choose apps that make sense.
2. Pick a pattern, (painstakingly) that you can use in combination with the crown to scroll through your apps and select which one you want to execute. You can organize anyway you want. For example someone put all their apps on a single line and just scroll through till they got to the one they want.
You can even sort by color or type of app… Your imagination is the limit.
Or, spread your apps out single file into geometric shapes like large triangles, honeycombs or hearts. You have to use other apps to “scaffold” your single rows until you have them built. Try it. it makes it very easy to scroll between apps and select the ones you want especially since the UI centers on an app and you can zoom to open it. You can have as many apps as you want.
I remember how excited I was when I found out folders were coming to iOS 4 (which, by the way, Steve Jobs at one point mistakenly called “iPhone 4” during the keynote about iOS well before an iPhone 4 device had been announced). Before then everyone just organized apps across pages. Hopefully Apple will come up with a better organization system than just freestyle inkblot for the watch in the future, as people begin to accumulate more apps. But for now I’m sticking to only apps that are convenient for watch use over the phone and that I would use all the time.
Mine looks like a bowtie, or an hourglass – circle of 6 around the watch app, then a row of 3, then a row of 4, then a row of 5, then 4, then 3 on both the top and bottom of the circle.
Just sent photo to email posted above.
Link to your screen shots, I want to see them. 🙂
Wow I kinda feel lame/unartistic all at once. I have not adjusted my layout nor did it even cross my mind to do so in such a creative way. Apparently I not worthy of my apple watch 🙁
Just means you don’t have OCD. Lol
Plus I prefer function to be built into the design, and some of these just look like they degrade usability, especially the ones that do not focus their most frequently used apps around the visible portion surrounding the Clock app it centers to.
Love my watch!
After a full day of what I would call “standard use” (no exercise workout), at 11 p.m. at night, I have 56% battery left! Awesome!
Yeah, nice. Well, I have not yet received my Apple Watch…
I like looking at the pretty layouts, but since apps come and go I’d go for more function over form, like a single arm of apps I can’t delete and will never use.
I almost never us the screen so I don’t care about putting it in any order at all.
Mine looks great…but I can’t get Weather to sync …anybody else having this problem?