This Awesome watchOS 5 Concept Sees Always-On Watch Faces and More
While we’re at least six months away from the official unveiling of new Apple Watch software, Matt Birchler is laying out some great ideas in his new watchOS 5 concept.
Birchler also imagines the ability for third-party developers to create their own faces.
Credit: Matt BirchlerBirchler’s top hope for watchOS 5 is for third-party apps access to the great Siri watch face:
Beyond calendars, the Siri watch face taps into a bunch of Apple’s own services like Reminders, Apple News, Weather, and more. This is nice, and I find these other apps to work well with the face in general, but I don’t use Apple’s own apps for a bunch of these things. I use Remember the Milk for my task management, not Reminders, so I never see my tasks on the Siri watch face. Likewise, the Weather app does an okay job of showing me the weather when the conditions are about to change, but I’d prefer a third party app to be able to pop up a card on the watch face when it’s about to rain, complete with a graph showing how much and for how long.
Essentially, Apple should be making the Siri watch face the smartest, most useful watch face someone can choose. It already is the smartest, but to be useful to everyone, they need to make the apps people are actually using work with it.
Another feature Birchler lays out that I’m wishing for as well is always-on watch faces. As he notes, the battery life of the watch continues to improve and the ability to always view the time would be great.
Other imagined features include the ability for third-party developers to create their own faces, automatic workout detection, sleep tracking, and a dedicated podcast app.
If you’re an Apple Watch fan, definitely take a look at the entire post. Most of Birchler’s hopes are very reasonable and will hopefully make the final cut to watchOS 5 in some form. If Apple sticks to the schedule of previous years, watchOS 5 could be announced in June at WWDC.
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