Apple is Changing Up Its Watch Faces in watchOS 26
Toggle Dark Mode
It looks like we’ll once again be saying goodbye to some of Apple’s classic watch faces in this year’s watchOS 26 release, as it quietly retires several longstanding entries.
This year, we’ll be losing five watch faces that have been around since at least 2019. These include Gradient, which arrived in watchOS 6, Liquid Metal, Vapor, and Fire-Water from watchOS 5, and the fun and playful Toy Story, which came to Apple’s wearable in watchOS 4 in 2017 to help showcase the larger display of the Apple Watch Series 4.
These have already vanished in the first watchOS 26 and iOS 26 betas, and it’s a safe bet that’s not a mistake. In fact, it’s likely just the continuation of what may have become a new trend.
While Apple has occasionally adjusted watch face designs and even shifted a few names around, last year’s watchOS 11 release was the first time it had dropped entire watch faces. The closest it came before that was the elimination of the original Modular face in watchOS 9. The Modular face we know today was originally Infograph Modular, a more expansive version designed for the Apple Watch Series 4. The original Modular face was kept around for older models with smaller screens, but that became unnecessary when Apple dropped support for the Series 3 in watchOS 9.
When Apple released watchOS 11 last year, it axed the Chronograph, Explorer, Numerals, and Siri faces. Chronograph was arguably redundant in light of Chronograph Pro, which was added five years ago in watchOS 7, and the Siri face was made redundant by the new Smart Stack feature in watchOS 10, which provided similar functionality from any watch face. Explorer was a slightly niche face designed explicitly for cellular Apple Watch models to show cellular signal strength.
Apple also removed Portraits as a standalone watch face in watchOS 11, but that’s because it merged all its features into the Photos watch face, which is arguably where they should have been in the first place.
Even though watchOS 11 removed watch faces, it made up for it with two new additions — Flux and Reflection — plus a significantly enhanced Photos face that not only gained portraits, but also took a page from the iPhone’s Photo Shuffle Lock Screen to intelligently choose suitable photos and compose and frame them for your Apple Watch display.
By contrast, Apple hasn’t announced any more watch faces in watchOS 26 to replace the five it’s taking away. Following the addition of its 2025 Pride Harmony watch face in watchOS 11.4, the Apple Watch now offers 64 watch faces. That’s a wealth of options, so it’s not surprising that Apple has decided it’s time to trim the list down a bit.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that Apple plans to surprise us with some new watch faces this fall that could be designed to show off the Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3. While watchOS 10 ushered in exciting new entries like the Snoopy face early in the beta cycle, Apple has more commonly played these cards closer to its vest and only added the new watch faces in its final release candidate builds that come out after its fall iPhone and Apple Watch launch events.
