How to Change and Customize Your Apple Watch Face

Your Apple Watch face is the screen you see every time you raise your wrist. Apple lets you change not just how it looks, but what information it shows you — all without touching your iPhone. You can have a simple clock face for casual wear and a detailed one for days when you want to track your health, weather, or calendar at a glance.

The small pieces of information that appear around the main clock display are called "complications." This is an old watchmaking term, and it means any extra feature beyond showing the time. On an Apple Watch, complications can show you the current temperature, your step count, your heart rate, the next event on your calendar, the battery level, a timer shortcut, and much more. You get to choose which complications appear and where.

Apple includes a library of watch faces to choose from, and new ones are added with software updates. Faces range from simple analog clock designs to colorful, information-packed digital displays. Some faces have more spots for complications than others.

Changing and customizing your watch face happens directly on the watch itself. You do not need your iPhone for most changes. The process involves pressing firmly on the current watch face to enter the face gallery, swiping to find a face you like, and then tapping "Edit" to adjust the colors and complications.

If you have more than one watch face set up, you can swipe left or right on the watch face at any time to switch between them quickly. Many people set up two or three faces — one for work, one for exercise, and one for relaxed evenings — and swipe between them as needed.

Apple Watch also lets you manage faces through the Watch app on your iPhone, which gives you a larger screen to work with and makes it easier to browse the full selection of available faces.