The watch face is easily among Apple Watch’s most important features, and watchOS 26 offers big improvements to watch faces in three main ways. Here’s what’s new.
#1: Brand new watch faces
As happens often with major new watchOS versions, Apple’s latest release includes a selection of brand new watch faces.
watchOS 26 adds four new faces total. Per Apple’s release notes:
- Exactograph is a modern re-imagination of a traditional regulator watch which separates out hours, minutes and seconds for more precise time keeping
- Flow uses Liquid Glass numerals that refract a fluid orb of color that responds to your wrist movements
- Waypoint acts as a live compass that will show where you are in relation to places you’ve saved in Maps or points of interest (Available on Apple Watch Ultra)
- Hermès Faubourg Party features animated shorts that appear based on the time of day or movements with a series of characters (Available on Apple Watch Hermès)
It’s always great to get more watch face options to choose from, and I’m especially a fan of the new Flow and Waypoint faces this year.
#2: Improvements to existing faces
A variety of watch faces you already know and love got updated in watchOS 26 too.
The Photos face, which Apple says is its most popular option, got two improvements this year:
- Liquid Glass time
- Featured photos option
Matching the systemwide Liquid Glass design, there’s a new ‘Glass’ color option for the face’s clock that allows more of your photo to shine through. And choosing ‘Featured’ as your image source ensures you’ll see many of the best photos in your library.
Beyond the Photos face upgrades, Apple has also brought support for ticking seconds with the always-on display to many more faces.
Always-on seconds support launched last year with Apple Watch Series 10, but only a few watch faces supported the feature. Now, it has expanded both to more hardware and software.
Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Apple Watch Series 11 both offer ticking seconds in always-on mode, and the list of supported faces has grown significantly.
#3: Watch face ‘hints’
After installing watchOS 26 on your Apple Watch, you might start noticing a unique UI element on your watch face.
A new feature called ‘hints’ will appear at the bottom of your screen, resembling a Liquid Glass complication.
Hints offer suggested apps and actions, and they’re connected to the Smart Stack.
Here’s how they work, per Apple:
In watchOS 26, the Smart Stack improves its prediction algorithms by incorporating more contextual data, sensor data, and data from a user’s routine to provide Smart Stack hints, a proactive prompt for actionable suggestions that are immediately useful. Made of Liquid Glass, Smart Stack hints will appear on the display as a gentle visual prompt. For example, a hint for Backtrack may appear when a user is in a remote location with no connectivity, or a hint for a Pilates workout may show up when a user arrives at a studio location at their usual time.
The Smart Stack has long offered suggested data and actionable prompts, but you had to first scroll your Apple Watch’s Digital Crown to manually open Smart Stack and find them.
Bringing these suggestions directly to the watch face is Apple’s way of making them more prominent and hopefully helpful.
Which of watchOS 26’s new watch face features have you been enjoying on your Apple Watch? Let us know in the comments.
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