Apple Watch Basics

Learn the basics of the Apple Watch. See how to use the various controls like the crown, side button, screen and microphone to navigate through the Watch's controls and apps. You can also use your iPhone's Apple Watch app to configure the screens and app on the Watch.

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Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. On today's episode let's take a look at the basics of using the Apple Watch.
Let's take a look at all the different ways you can interact with your Apple Watch. 
When you raise it up you should see the home screen which is the watch face. You've got some physical switches on the side and also of course the touch screen.
So for the physical switches you press in the crown and it kind of acts as a home button always taking you to the watch face. You can also turn the crown. It doesn't do anything here on the watch face but we will see it do something on other screens. 
You have this side button here. If you press the side button from the watch face it takes you to your favorite contacts and you can initiate messaging or a phone call from your iPhone. That kind of thing.
You also also have the ability to swipe. So you can swipe down and go to your Notifications or you can swipe up and go to Glances. You can see all those dots at the bottom of the screen. They are all your different glance screens. This one is the Weather one. There's Calendar, Activities, Power. You can go all the way to the last and there is kind of a Control Center type of thing there where you can set it to Airplane Mode, you can Mute it, things like that. So you can go back and forth between all these Glance screens here by swiping.
Pressing the crown, like I said before, acts like the Home button. So it takes you back home very quickly and easily.
Another thing you can do is you can tap and kind of forcefully press. That is called the Forced Touch. It brings up Contour Mode for whatever it is you are using. So for the watch face I can change the watch face or customize there. Click the crown to go back.
So when I'm at the watch face I can click in the Crown again and it takes me to the App screen. Then I can go and use a drag with my finger to get to whatever app it is I want to use. 
So let's, for instance, go into an app here. Let's pick say the Stocks app. Then here I can scroll by dragging or I can use the Crown to scroll.
Another control is of course to use Siri. The way you get to Siri is the same way you do on say an iPhone. You press the Home button. In this case it is the Crown. You hold it in and Siri will appear. You can ask Siri a question and Siri will try to figure out what you want.
Then when you need to enter text you are going to have to do it with your voice. So, for instance, let's go into the Twitter app and say I want to create a new tweet. The way to do that is to do the Force Touch. It brings up a single control in the middle of the screen that is to tweet. That will then allow me to enter a new tweet. The way to do that is to tap the microphone and then talk....I'm tweeting from my Apple Watch..... Tap the Done there and it will put it up there for me to inspect. I can cancel or send the tweet.
This happens with anything you need to do to enter text in whether Messaging or perhaps interacting with an app that asks you to name something or enter some text in. You are going to have to do it with your voice. There is never a keyboard to enter something in.
Now controlling your Apple Watch is also dependent on your iPhone and the Apple Watch app. So you go in here and this is where you set things that you can't set on the watch. Like, for instance, go into Glances and you can see there are the Glance screens I was looking at. I can grab the right side and change the order. I can remove one. I can add them from the bottom. These are apps that I have that have a glance screen component to them. So that is how I would change what I see when I go to Glances.
Likewise I can go to specific apps and change something. So for instance if I go to Weather I can't change which cities are in my Weather app there on my Apple Watch because there are just the same cities that are in the Weather app on the iPhone. So I would go into my iPhone's Weather app and change the cities there and that is what I would see on my watch as well.
But I can do something like change the default city that appears when I first bring up the Weather app.
So there is a varying amount of controls you can have and also it depends on the app. You've got the default Apple apps here but you also have third party apps as well that will get added as you install apps. If you install an app on your iPhone that has an Apple Watch component to it, then it appears on your Apple Watch. If it doesn't have an Apple Watch component there is nothing that you can do to bring it on your Apple Watch. The developer has to add that to the app in order for it to appear on the Apple Watch.
The iPhone app is also where you control app layout. So you can see all the different apps you have installed and this is how you drag them around to put them somewhere else. So you can kind of group your apps together just by kind of playing around with this interface.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Apple Watch Basics”

Christopher Malaney

10 years ago

So my question is how close does your iPhone have to be to the watch, could I put my iPhone in my locker at the gym and still be able to use it to text or call or use the other apps?

Gary Rosenzweig

The iPhone and Apple Watch talk via Bluetooth 4.0. The approximate range of Bluetooth 4.0 is 330 feet. But as with all radio communication this will vary depending on walls (materials and thickness) and interference from other sources (devices, appliances, machinery, the sun, etc.)

Mark DeWitte

Actually that's not completely factual. The Apple Watch and iPhone will communicate with each other if they're on the same WiFI network. So if the gym has wifi, and both are on the network, they don't have to be in Bluetooth range.

I thought about that, but I figured a gym wouldn't have wifi. But maybe that was a bad assumption. Plus, I'm not sure about the wifi connection in the first place. Even thought I have read that too, I don't see how the Apple Watch would get on a wifi network -- there are no controls to log into one.

Peter Cox

They told me in the Apple shop that Bluetooth and wifi can be used (but they don't always get it right!)

Sherif

great intro video to the watch....makes me wanna go buy one now! but gotta a wait a little longer to get my hands on one here in Dubai.

Comments Closed.

Apple Watch Basics

Comments: 6 Responses to “Apple Watch Basics”

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