How to Switch Apple Watch Faces Automatically, Anytime, Anywhere

Apple Watch SE Faces Credit: Apple
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Customizable faces and complications are the most distinctive features of the Apple Watch. Unfortunately, you won’t find a watch face store like in other operating systems, but the watch faces provided are unique and cool enough, plus there are a bunch of faces for you to choose from. You could choose to have an elegant or business-type look one day and switch to a cartooney style the next. It’s even possible now to share them with the world.

With so many options, choosing which watch face to use can be tricky. You might want to have a watch face filled with complications to help you at work during the day, and a more simple one for when you come back from work.

But constantly changing watch faces can be annoying. And, thanks to watchOS 7 and iOS 14, is also unnecessary.

The new updates let you have your watch faces in constant rotation automatically, making it easier to show off your favorite watch faces, and their most useful complications.

With just a simple shortcut, you can have your watch faces automatically change depending on the time of the day, or where you’re located. Pretty neat, right? Well, it’s also pretty easy to do. Just follow these steps.

How to automatically change your watch faces during the day.

As mentioned before, your Apple Watch can automatically change watch faces on its own. But for this to work, we’ll need to make use of the Shortcuts app on your iPhone. Here’s what you need to do:

  1. On your iPhone, open the Shortcuts app.
  2. Tap on the Automation tab at the bottom of your screen.
  3. Tap on Create Personal Automation. If you already have an Automation, you’ll need to tap on the Plus button located in the top right corner of your screen, and then tap on Create Personal Automation.
  4. Select Time of Day.
  5. Make sure Time of Day has a checkmark next to it.
  6. Also, make sure that, under the Repeat section, Daily has a checkmark next to it.
  7. Set the time to when you want your watch face to change.
  8. Tap on Next on the top right corner of your screen.
  9. Tap on Add Action.
  10. Scroll down and search for Set Watch Face. You can also type it in the search box at the top.
  11. Once you find it, tap on it.
  12. Now, back in the Actions window, you should see Set Active watch face to. Tap on the Face button at the end of it.
  13. You’ll see a list of all your faces available. Choose the one you’ll want to use.
  14. Tap on Next on the top right side of your screen.
  15. Make sure to toggle off the Ask Before Running option.
  16. In the pop-up message, tap on Don’t Ask.
  17. Finally, tap on Done on the top right corner of your screen.

Easy right? Ok, just a couple of things you should know. First, when you’re setting the Time of Day for your watch face to change, you can also select Sunrise or Sunset, in case you want your watch face to change at that time of day.

Also, the Repeat section lets you choose when to activate your shortcut. Since we want it to work every day, we selected Daily. But you can also choose Weekly or Monthly if you want your watch face to switch less often.

Finally, it’s important to toggle Ask Before Running off. The reason is that if you don’t, you’re iPhone will constantly ask for permission before changing the watch face on your Apple Watch, which not only be annoying, but it would also defeat the purpose of having automatic watch face changes.

How to automatically change your watch faces when you’re at a certain location.

Changing your watch faces when you leave or arrive at a new location is basically the same process, but it does have a few differences. Here’s how to do it.

  1. On your iPhone, open the Shortcuts app.
  2. Tap on the Automation tab at the bottom of your screen.
  3. Tap on Create Personal Automation. If you already have an Automation, you’ll need to tap on the Plus button located in the top right corner of your screen, and then tap on Create Personal Automation.
  4. Select the Arrive or Leave option. It depends on when you want your watch face to change.
  5. Tap on Location.
  6. You might need to Allow Shortcuts to use your location if you haven’t already.
  7. Tap on Current Location. Or, if you want another place, you can use the Search Bar to type the place or the address.
  8. Tap on Done.
  9. You can choose when you want your shortcut to activate. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll leave it at Any Time.
  10. Tap on Next.
  11. From here on out, the steps are the same as in the section above. Tap on Add Action.
  12. Scroll down and search for Set Watch Face. You can also type it in the search box at the top.
  13. Once you find it, tap on it.
  14. Now, back in the Actions window, you should see Set Active watch face to. Tap on the Face button at the end of it.
  15. You’ll see a list of all your faces available. Choose the one you want to use.
  16. Tap Next on the top right side of your screen.
  17. Make sure to toggle off the Ask Before Running option.
  18. In the pop-up message, tap on Don’t Ask.
  19. Finally, tap Done on the top right corner of your screen.

Here, you should also keep in mind that you can choose Any Time or Time Range to tell your shortcut when you want it to activate. Any time will keep the shortcut always running, but you can specify during what hours you want the shortcut to work. Sadly, you can’t choose certain days, as we did in the previous section, but it’s still worth taking into consideration.

And that’s it! Now you can show off your favorite watch faces without having to worry about switching them for yourself. Go crazy and have fun.

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