View and Control Your Apple Watch From Your iPhone

A new feature in iOS 16 and watchOS 9 is the ability to mirror you Apple Watch screen on your iPhone. You can use this to get a larger view of your Watch screen or to do a screen recording.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can mirror and control your Apple Watch from your iPhone.
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So a great new feature of iOS 16 and Apple Watch OS 9 is the ability to see your Apple Watch screen on your iPhone. Not only that but you can control it from there as well. Now before you try this make sure you meet the requirements. First, you must be using an Apple Watch series 6 or newer. The Apple Watch must be using the new watchOS 9 operating system and your iPhone should be using iOS 16 or newer. I'll have some more trouble shooting tips at the end.
The idea here is you're going to want to see your Apple Watch screen on your iPhone. To do that it's a new feature in the Settings App. You would think you would go to the watch app to get to this. But in fact you go to Settings. In Settings you're going to want to go down to Accessibility. It's an option here under Physical and Motor. Look for Apple Watch Mirroring. Now strangely it is a switch. Actually to get this to turn on you need to turn the switch On and then it activates right here on the screen. It's kind of odd that it is a switch. I wouldn't be surprised if the screen changes in future versions of iOS. 
So I'm going to turn it On here and it is going to connect to my watch. So this is the watch that is already connected to this iPhone. It is what syncs information between it and all of that. Now you can see here exactly what is on the screen of the watch. The watch is going to have this blue rectangle around it to indicate that it is being shown on your iPhone as well. Now you can control this using your watch, just like before. Anything that you do here on your watch will be reflected on the screen you see on your iPhone. But you can also control this using your iPhone. 
So you can just touch the crown here and drag down or drag up like you are manipulating the physical thing. There is the side button as well. Just a quick tap on the side button there on the screen and it is acting just like you're pressing it here. Then you can scroll up and down with your finger to manipulate what's on the screen. Tap on an app to go into it. It all works just as you would expect. So control your watch from your iPhone screen or from the watch itself. Either way it works. 
Now this is in Accessibility. The reason it is here is to give you a larger screen if this screen is sometimes too small for you. Maybe for changing things. Getting into Settings. Manipulating some apps it is easier to do it seeing a larger screen on your iPhone. But this also gives us the ability, as you can see here in this tutorial, to record the Apple Watch screen. Previously we could just take screenshots, just still images of what is going on on the Apple Watch. But now with mirroring it to the iPhone you could record the iPhone screen using iPhone Screen Recording or recording software like I'm using and actually get a recording. So perhaps I can finally start doing some decent Apple Watch tutorials in the future. 
Now this can be used for customizing your Apple Watch using a bigger screen. But remember that you also have the Watch App. You could use the Watch App for things like say Editing your watch faces, changing colors, complications, and all of that. But even here the watch faces appear pretty small right here. Using Apple Watch mirroring may actually be a better option. For instance here if I were to go and try to customize this face here I would go to Edit and you could see it is a little bit bigger than what I was looking at in the watch app. 
Now some more troubleshooting tips. Make sure you've got an Apple Watch Series 6 or newer. Make sure operating systems are up-to-date. If it is still not working, like the screen comes up but it is just a spinning wheel in the middle and it never connects to the Apple Watch, make sure your Apple Watch, of course, is On. Make sure it is Unlocked. If you need to try restarting. Shutting down and starting up your Apple Watch again. If that doesn't work you want to do the same for your iPhone. But in my experience if it doesn't work just simply restarting the Apple Watch will actually get it to work. So I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 15 Responses to “View and Control Your Apple Watch From Your iPhone”

Robert

11 months ago

It is useful except when you press the little (x) - it disconnects. Also some features require touching the watch - ECG. Neat feature. Maybe a Shortcut to the Mirroring app? Thanks

Jeff

I do not have the Apple Watch Mirroring under Physical and Motor. I have IOS 16.0.3

Gary Rosenzweig

Jeff: How about the other requirements? Which Apple Watch do you have and is it running watchOS 9?

Jonathan

I got this to work, however, after I engaged it I was no longer able to get control center to appear on my watch by swiping up. I had to restart the watch to get it working again. Have you seen bugs with this feature? Also, along a similar line, have you had issues unlocking your Mac automatically with the Apple Watch? I can't get this to work consistently and Apple support has not been very helpful.

Jonathan: I haven't experienced that Control Center watch bug, but I don't really use that feature much. As for unlocking a Mac with an Apple Watch, yes. I have never been able to get that feature to work constantly over the years and several Macs.

Running watch OS 9.02

Jeff: Which Watch model though?

Just noticed, I have Apple Watch series 5, so that is reason.

Patrick

Gary, thanks for this amazing tip on using the iPhone to view and work with my Apple watch.

Thanks again.

Michael

10 months ago

Jonathan/Gary. Unlocking my Mac and Mac Book Pro with my watch works 90% of the time - quite good. However, my watch also used to unlock the locked files in, for instance, the Notes app. This stopped working some time ago and I'm not sure how to fix it? Thanks & Regards Michael

Michael: Not sure if that will work with Notes. The latest version changed how notes are locked and you now have two options. In Notes, Settings, I would assume you need to use your Login Password for locking, and them there could be a checkbox under it for Apple Watch (I see one for Touch ID on my MacBook Air, for instance).

Thanks for the reply Gary. My soon to be replaced MBP will only run Monterey and I am guessing the settings you mentioned are not available in my version of Notes (V4.9). I checked the App Store for a possible update for Notes but strangely Notes does not appear in the list of my Apps on my MBP, neither will Notes appear when I search for it in the App store. I think I must be missing something. Thanks & Regards Michael

Michael: Notes is a macOS app, part of macOS. You can't have Ventura's Notes app while using something prior to Ventura.

Paul

2 months ago

I start music playing through my AirPods. Now I start a workout. I want to see my heart rate on my phone in the gym so I don't have to keep bending my head but as soon as I mirror the watch, the music stops can't find any way around it anybody have ideas?

Paul: I don't think there is a solution for that. You have to either pick music or the mirroring. Or, maybe play the music on your Watch instead?

View and Control Your Apple Watch From Your iPhone

Comments: 15 Responses to “View and Control Your Apple Watch From Your iPhone”

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