Today, we’re looking at the first 10 things you should do if you get your brand new Apple Watch Series 10. Now, I broke this article down into basically two parts. First, we will check out how to customize your Apple Watch, and then we will take a look at some essential settings you should change. All right, to start things off, let’s take a look at customizing the Apple Watch Series 10.

Edit Watch Faces

Since there are so many things you can do, my favorite one is to customize your watch face. Now, like this, you can really make this watch your own. There are two ways of customizing this watch. You can either do it directly on the watch or you can do it on your smartphone. By long pressing on your home display, you will get to a selection of watch faces. By default, you will only get this Flux watch face, but if you swipe to the side, you can click on the plus symbol, and right here you will find plenty more watch faces. Right here, you will find a classic activity analog one, you have astronomy, GMT, gradient, and many, many more. You can basically scroll forever. Now, on your smartphone, you also have the face gallery, and right here you will find even more options, even within the different categories. Now, in all honesty, it’s a little bit easier to do on your smartphone.

If you want to customize the watch face, just click on the edit button and start customizing. There are so many ways to do so depending on the watch face that you are on. There are different things that you can customize. Now, on this Flux watch face, you can change the style of the numbers by scrolling up and down. Then you can change the overall style of the watch face and all of the colors. Now, on other watch faces, you can also customize the complications, and that’s probably the best part about it.

On the GMT watch face, for example, you can change up to four different complications. Just click on one and you will get to a list of many more complications that you can use. You have things like your workouts, your wallet, Spotify, all of your health metrics, maps, and many more. But again, it’s probably a little bit easier to do on your smartphone as the screen is a lot bigger over here. Once you set up all of your complications, you can interact with those right from your home display, and you don’t need to look for the apps in the apps menu anymore.

Change App Layout

The next thing I would do is to change the app layout. By default, it is set to a grid layout, which we all know from Apple. But you can also change it to a list layout. All you have to do is scroll all the way down in your app menu, and right here you can change it to a list. Now, the app list will start with an A and end with a Z. What I would also do on the grid layout is to reorder the apps, so I have the ones that I’m using most often on the top. For that, just long press on the screen and then drag and drop an app to a new place. Something else that is also very important to me is the watch orientation. Now, this one will basically flip the screen upside down. You first can decide if you want to wear your watch on the left wrist or on the right wrist, and then you can also change the position of the crown. Since I’m a lefty, I always wear my watch on the right side, and I also want to wear my crown on the right side. Like this, the crown won’t get in the way when I’m doing any exercises like push-ups. Right here, the crown will push against the back of your hand sometimes, and that’s a little bit uncomfortable.

Save Battery with Notifications

Next up, let’s talk about your notifications and how you can actually save a little bit of your battery life. I think by default you get all of the notifications that you would also get on your smartphone, but you can also target specific notifications to turn off. For this one, go to your notification settings on your phone or on your watch, and then you can scroll down until you see all of your apps.

I really just need notifications from WhatsApp, my banking apps, and maybe YouTube, but that’s it. I can turn off everything else, which again saves a lot of battery life because the watch doesn’t light up every 5 minutes, and I’m more concentrated when I’m working since I really only get the necessary stuff. Then I can still decide if I actually want to respond to any messages. I also like to keep the notifications indicator on, which is the red dot when you have unread notifications.

Always-On Display

Another feature that is turned on by default is the Always-On display mode. I think it’s one of the best features that you can have on a smartwatch, even though this will cut your battery life in half. First of all, you always see your time and you don’t have to flick your wrist, and then you get to your apps a little bit faster as well. Plus, everyone else that is looking at your Apple Watch sees your cool new watch face.

Change Brightness & Text Size

I would also suggest changing the text size and the brightness level of the watch. As for the brightness, I will stick to the medium settings as it’s a very good mix. You get more out of your battery life, and you still see everything on your display as this watch has a max brightness of 2,000 nits. Also, depending on your eyesight, I would go with the smallest text size. It’s still big enough to read, and since you go with the smallest one, you see a little bit more text on your messages. The bigger the text size, the less you see on your messages and other texts.

Emergency SOS

Now, the Apple Watch Series 10 also comes with the emergency SOS feature, and there are different ways to activate it. First, you have to set up an emergency contact. Right here, you can just choose a contact from your contacts list, and then you can toggle on different features. First up, you can manually activate the SOS emergency by long pressing your crown button. But the great thing is that it will also activate by itself either when it detects a serious crash, whether it’s in your car or on your bike, and then it also detects a hard fall. I would also suggest keeping it always on and not only during your workouts since a lot of accidents happen when you’re not actively doing a workout on your smartwatch.

Reply to Messages & Siri

I also think there is a best way to reply to messages and to use Siri. I mean, you can go with the “Hey Siri” thing, but by pressing the button, it goes a lot faster, and sometimes Siri is just not listening. As for your messages, it doesn’t matter if you have the bigger 46mm or the smaller 42mm version of the Apple Watch 10. The keyboard is still small on both of them, so I would suggest going with the “Speak to Dictate” feature. It works so well. It gets what you’re saying super fast, you have no spelling errors, and I really think that this is the correct way to respond to your messages.

Background App Refresh

Another feature that could cost you some battery life is the background app refresh. It’s okay to have it turned on for a couple of apps that you use the most, but you don’t need it for every single app that you have on your smartwatch. Just turn those off in your general settings and you will have a longer battery life.

Quickly Switch Between Apps

As for the last tip, I got a little tip for you guys on how to quickly switch between your apps on the watch. This feature used to be on your lower button, but now you have to double press your crown, and it will open up a list with all of your open apps. From over here, you can quickly switch between your apps, but you can also close these apps right over here if you swipe to the left and press the red X button.