How to Change Your Apple Watch Face
To change your Apple Watch face, press and hold the current face until it zooms out, swipe left or right to the face you want, then tap it. To add a new design, keep swiping past the last face and tap the + button. You can do all of it from your phone instead: open the Watch app, tap a face under My Faces and choose Set as current Watch Face, or use the Face Gallery tab to add one. Changes made on either device sync to both.
Change your watch face on the watch
- Wake the screen by raising your wrist or tapping the display.
- Press and hold the face until it shrinks and the name of the face appears underneath. This is face-switching mode.
- Swipe left or right to move through every face you have added. They sit in one strip, Apple's designs and any custom ones side by side.
- Tap the face you want. It fills the screen and becomes your current face straight away.
- To add a new one instead, swipe left past the final face and tap the + button. Turn the Digital Crown to browse Apple's Gallery and tap Add.
Change your watch face from your iPhone
- Open the Watch app on your iPhone and stay on the My Watch tab.
- Scroll to My Faces — this is the same strip you swipe through on the watch, laid out as a list.
- Tap any face, then tap Set as current Watch Face. Your watch switches within a few seconds, as long as it is nearby and paired.
- To install something new, tap the Face Gallery tab at the bottom, choose a design, set its colour and complications, and tap Add.
Watch or iPhone: which route does what
Almost everything can be done from either device, with two exceptions worth knowing before you go hunting through menus.
| What you want to do | On the watch | In the iPhone Watch app |
|---|---|---|
| Switch to a face you already have | Press and hold the face, swipe, tap | My Faces → tap a face → Set as current Watch Face |
| Add a face from Apple's Gallery | Press and hold, swipe to the end, tap + | Face Gallery tab → pick a design → Add |
| Edit complications | Press and hold → Edit → swipe to Complications | My Faces → tap the face → tap any complication slot |
| Change colour, style or dial detail | Press and hold → Edit → swipe between screens | My Faces → tap the face → change Colour or Style |
| Reorder your faces | Not available on the watch | My Faces → Edit → drag the handles |
| Delete a face | Press and hold, swipe to it, swipe up, Remove | My Faces → Edit → tap the remove button |
| Add a custom full-screen design from an app | Not available on the watch — starts on iPhone | Add it in the app; it appears in My Faces |
The two exceptions: reordering is iPhone-only, and any custom full-screen design from an app starts on the iPhone as well. Everything else works from the wrist.
Reorder or delete a watch face
Once you have more than a handful of faces, the order matters more than the count — the face two swipes away is the one you will actually use.
- Reorder: in the Watch app on your iPhone, go to My Faces, tap Edit, then drag the handles to arrange them. There is no way to reorder from the watch itself, so put your two or three everyday faces at the front here.
- Delete from the watch: press and hold your current face, swipe to the one you want gone, swipe up on it, and tap Remove.
- Delete from the iPhone: in My Faces, tap Edit and remove any face from the list. Deleting a face never deletes the design — Apple's Gallery still has it, and a face added from an app stays in that app's library for you to re-add.
Changing to a custom or photo face
Everything above covers Apple's own designs. If what you actually want is a full-screen photo or a designed piece of artwork on your wrist, that is a different route: Apple does not allow fully native third-party watch faces, so custom designs install through Apple's photo-face pipeline from an iPhone app. Once installed, they behave exactly like any other face — press and hold, swipe, tap.
The install guide covers that route step by step, and the photo-face guide covers using one of your own pictures. If you would rather browse finished designs than build one, the Watch Lux gallery holds 500+ AI-crafted faces across live/animated, 3D depth and photo styles — the minimal designs and dark & OLED designs are the two categories that survive a busy complication layout best, and a new themed collection lands every week.
How do you change the watch face from your iPhone?
Open the Watch app on your iPhone and stay on the My Watch tab. Under My Faces you will see every face installed on your watch. Tap the one you want and choose Set as current Watch Face — it appears on your wrist within a few seconds. To install something new instead, switch to the Face Gallery tab, tap a design, set its colour and complications, then tap Add.
The iPhone route is the easier one for anything fiddly. Choosing a complication from a long list is far quicker on a phone-sized screen, and the Face Gallery shows Apple's full catalogue laid out rather than one design at a time. Your watch needs to be nearby and paired for the change to land; if nothing happens, the syncing troubleshooter walks through the usual causes.
How do you add a new face from Apple's Face Gallery?
On the watch, press and hold your current face, swipe left past the last one, then tap the plus button. Turn the Digital Crown to browse Apple's designs and tap Add on the one you like. On the iPhone, open the Watch app, tap the Face Gallery tab at the bottom, choose a design, adjust it, and tap Add. Either way it joins your rotation immediately.
Adding a face does not replace anything — watchOS keeps every face you have added in one long strip you swipe through, and you can hold dozens at once. The limits and practical rotation size are covered separately. Apple's own guide to changing Apple Watch faces documents the same steps from the source.
How do you change the complications on a watch face?
Press and hold the face, tap Edit, then swipe left until you reach the Complications screen. Tap the slot you want to change, turn the Digital Crown to pick a new complication, then press the Digital Crown to save and tap the face to set it. Not every face has the same slots — some offer four or more, and a few offer none at all.
Complications are the small data widgets around the dial: date, weather, activity rings, battery, a timer, or a shortcut into an app. Which ones a face can hold is fixed by the face design itself, so if a face has no room for what you need, the fix is to change faces rather than to keep editing. Apple's customize the watch face documentation lists the slot layouts per design.
Why does swiping sideways no longer change my watch face?
Because watchOS 10 removed the edge-to-edge swipe from the normal face view — a sideways swipe there no longer switches faces. Press and hold the face first, and swiping works as it always did. Apple later added the old behaviour back as an option: on your watch, open Settings, tap Clock, and turn on Swipe to Switch Watch Face.
This one change accounts for a lot of "my watch face is stuck" confusion after an update. Nothing is broken and no face has been lost — only the gesture moved behind a press and hold. If your face is genuinely changing on its own instead, that is a different mechanism entirely: faces switching by Focus or schedule explains what triggers it and how to stop it.
How do you change the colour or style of a watch face?
Press and hold the face, tap Edit, then swipe left and right between the editing screens. Most faces put colour on the first screen and style, dial detail or numeral options on the next. Turn the Digital Crown on any screen to move through the choices, then press it to save. The same options appear in the Watch app on your iPhone under My Faces.
How much you can change depends on the face. Apple's analogue and modular designs offer several editing screens; a photo-based face gives you the image and little else, because the picture is doing the design work. That is the trade-off between a face you configure and a face you choose — and it is why picking the right design in the first place matters more than editing does.
Give yourself something to switch to
Swiping between faces is only worth it when the faces are worth swiping to. Watch Lux is free to download, installs a design in one tap, and adds a new collection every week.
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