Apple Watch Series 10 features a larger display, thinner design, and smarter watch faces. It’s the only model that displays seconds on the watch face in always-on mode. There’s just one catch: only three watch faces support this hardware feature. Now, that number has grown — to a whopping four.
The watch face situation on Apple Watch is really weird right now. People want more ways to customize their watch faces. The dream of third-party watch faces has been lost to time. Meanwhile, Apple is actually removing watch faces for no apparent reason (other than the Siri face).
Yet, the strangest strategy has been supporting a new Apple Watch hardware feature on so few faces.
Apple Watch Series 10 can show continuously updating seconds, even in always-on mode. However, this feature is limited to three watch faces:
- Flux, a digital watch face with a rising line indicator tracking the passing seconds
- Reflections, a form-over-function analog face that includes a seconds hand but lacks numbers around the dial
- Activity Digital, another digital watch face and the only numerical representation of seconds
I guessed at launch that existing faces would be brought up to speed in an update to watchOS 11. I was wrong.
The good news is that Apple’s new Unity Rhythm face in watchOS 11.3 supports always-on seconds, just like Reflections.
The bad news? This sums up Apple’s watch face game plan: introduce a few new watch faces annually that feature always-on seconds, while simultaneously removing some less popular watch faces that lack this feature.
Ideally, this is incorrect, and watchOS 12 updates all watch faces to support always-on seconds. A standard analog watch face with numerals, like Utility or California, should support always-on seconds — especially if Apple isn’t going to update each face. Every watch face should support the hardware’s capabilities though.
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