I can still switch between watch faces with a single finger, just not a single action. Tap-and-hold, swipe, tap. Yes, more work, but the same number of digits or appendages required.
The same single finger can rotate the digital crown up to reveal an active timer in the widget stack, and you don’t even need to dismiss the stack, just drop your wrist and it goes away.
I use the finger double pinch to reveal my Water Minder widget to check if I should be grabbing a glass of water, or to then tap and log one. I use it to confirm I have taken my meds. I use it on occasional other notifications, too.
On the whole, I prefer this model to any of the previous ones.
THIS - OP and others complaining about this have obviously never (or rarely) accidentally changed their watch face. It happened to myself and my wife frequently, and WAF is important for all things tech!
Having said that, I have been planning on setting up two custom complications - one for exercise mode, one for everything else. The new OS would cause switching between the two to take an extra few seconds, but this would be used exactly TWICE per day. Can’t imagine my productivity would take a hit.
I feel like I’m in the minority here on this, but I prefer the new watch face switching method. Too many times before I’d look down at my watch and it would be on a different face. With the new tap and hold then swipe, the watch stays on the face I want. And it adds a fraction of a second or so to the process to switch…worth it for me.
While I don’t think every situation can be fixed by a setting, but maybe Apple should have a toggle setting for “fast watch face switching” for those who want that method back? But I wouldn’t want to lose the new way.
This has been a dreadful change for a regular runner. As the weeks pass it just feels worse.
I used to be able to switch between apps without touching the screen, but no longer. Bear in mind that AirPods have no volume on them, but if I wanted to change the volume before, it was fine. A double tap of the crown would go to Now Playing, a twist of that crown would change the volume, another double click would go back to my route map. I didn’t even need to look at the screen. I do it 10 times a run.
Now if I want to change the volume I have to start stabbing at the screen. Bearing in mind that the screen is often wet from the rain here in England and I’m usually wearing gloves. So if I want to change the volume I often have to stop running, take off a glove, wipe off the screen on my pants so that the touchscreen registers properly, open the Now Playing app, change the volume, go back to my route map, then carry on again. Every time I want to change the volume. Or I can try Siri, but that is a total crapshoot. It’s such a thoughtless change.
I’m so glad they’ve brought that back. It felt like a whole dimensional axis was missing from the watch without faces being as easy to navigate as the app stack, etc.
You can still double-click the crown, but instead of the Dock, this gesture will take you to your most recently-used apps. I would guess you could still use the double-click gesture that you’re accustomed to in order to toggle between Now Playing and your route map app.
I’ve mostly gotten used to the changes. I appreciate the introduction of widgets to allow me to have information readily available by turning the crown. What I still don’t get is why this feature gets two gestures (1: twist crown; 2: swipe up). It wouldn’t surprise me if the Watch team reverted to using the crown to bring up widgets, using the swipe-up for control center, and then using the side button for a (brought back from the dead) Dock… One gesture per feature per watch control.
just got the wife trained sigh