TOP 10 GESTURES

Essential interactions with your Apple Watch

1.Wakeup

There are three ways to wake up the Apple Watch: raise the Watch and tilt it towards your face, or push either the Digital Crown or the side button. All three methods take you to the watch face. To put the Apple Watch to sleep, lower your arm or cover its screen with your other hand.

2. Rotate

Rotating the Digital Crown zooms in and out of the Home screen, and in the Photos app it works in a similar manner to the pinch gesture on an iPhone to zoom in and out. In other apps, like Mail, Messages and Twitter, rotating it scrolls through messages (just like swiping up and down on your iPhone).

3. Glances

Swiping up from the bottom of the watch face brings up Glances, which are a quick way to access key features of Watch apps. Swipe left and right to move between the different glances on your Apple Watch.

4. Friends

Pressing the side button brings up your friends list – shortcuts to 12 contacts, which you can pick in the Apple Watch iPhone app. Rotate the Digital Crown to select a someone then tap their face and choose whether to call or dictate a text message.

5. Deep press

The Watch’s most exciting gesture uses Apple’s new Force Touch technology and is sometimes referred to by Apple as the ‘deep press’. This is the same gesture found on the trackpad of Apple’s new MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops. Essentially, it’s a much firmer press on the Apple Watch screen than a normal tap. The fastest way to see a deep press in action is to wake up your Watch and then press firmly on the watch face. The watch face bounces back to reveal its customisation options. (Lightly tap the screen to get out of this mode.) The deep press gesture performs something different in each app (but does nothing in Glances), so it’s worth trying when you install a new app. If no further options are available the screen briefly bounces back and forwards.

6. Toggle

Double-press the Digital Crown to toggle between the watch face window and the most recently used app. This is very useful once you get the hang of it. To see all of your apps, press the Crown once to get to the watch face, and then again to reach the Home screen.

7. Siri

Pressing and holding in the Digital Crown brings up Siri and enables you to speak your commands. Siri doesn’t speak back on the Apple Watch, and will quickly vanish when you stop speaking. Press the Digital Crown to cancel Siri.

8.Home

The Digital Crown also doubles up as the Home button. Pushing it in serves a variety of functions. It wakes up the Apple Watch. From the watch face it takes you directly to the Home screen, which displays installed apps. At the Home screen, pressing the Crown takes you back to the watch face.

9. Notifications

Swiping down from the top of the watch face brings up notifications (a red dot at the top indicates unread notifications). Swiping a notification to the left reveals an option to clear it. To remove all of them, perform a deep press and then choose Clear All.

10.Power

Tap and hold the side button to bring up the power and lock options. Three sliders appear: Power Off, Power Reserve and Lock Device. Slide an option to the right to activate it. Power Reserve turns off all Apple Watch functions except for the time (displayed in green text).