Apple is probably facing a major overhaul of its Apple Watch operating system. According to the financial news agency Bloomberg, watchOS 10 will make key changes to its operation. These could be shown for the first time at the WWDC 2023 developer conference in early June. Now there are first details on what the interface of the smartwatch could look like in the future.
More than grid and dock
As a Twitter leaker who has been right in the past writes, the main changes are revolving ostensibly to manage apps. This has long been considered suboptimal: The Apple Watch offers either a confusing grid display in the form of a honeycomb or – introduced later – a strictly alphabetically sorted dock that requires a lot of scrolling. In the future, the operation will supposedly be based more on the home screen of the iPhone – and will also offer folders for the first time.
However, it remains unclear how this is to be achieved due to the significantly smaller screen. Instead of the zoomable grid, a larger number of icons could simply be listed in a configurable row, showing four times four applications, for example. In a mock-up, leaker @analyst941 shows this in an even larger form (three by four icons). When implementing such an idea, you would also have to scroll a lot, but the grid display, which tends to be confusing for many users, would be replaced. (This was once considered innovative and a trademark of the Apple Watch.)
iPhone oriented
It will be “significantly easier to use” and to move icons, says @analyst941. It is still unclear whether the new format will be a third option alongside the grid view and dock or will replace the grid view. Folders should in turn be based on the look of earlier iOS versions such as 4 to 6, i.e. be a bit simpler than in current iOS variants.
What other new features will be in watchOS 10 has not yet been leaked. It is only said several times that Apple has come up with many innovations for the round version number. Most recently, watchOS updates were mainly used for product maintenance – clock faces were screwed on and new health and sports functions were integrated. Many users also hope that in the future it will be possible to completely configure clock faces themselves.
(bsc)
