Personalize the Apple Watch Face
Since the Apple Watch is as much a fashion statement as it is a piece of technology, personalizing it goes beyond merely choosing the case material and watch band. Its Retina screen can display digital, analog, and even several whimsical watch faces.
Pick a Watch Face
The Apple Watch offers several watch faces, from simulated traditional chronographs to Mickey Mouse and his tapping toes to an astronomical design that lets you explore our solar system.
Activate a Face
The easiest method of switching faces is to swipe from the left or right edge of the screen. Another option is to force-touch the current watch face, swipe to highlight the one you want, and then tap to select it (Figure 14).
For a broader view of the available faces, open the Watch app on the iPhone and tap the Face Gallery button (Figure 15). This screen displays every face type along with a row highlighting the faces added in the most recent watchOS update.
Tap the face you want, optionally customize its appearance and complications (more on that in a moment), and then tap the Add button to include it in your set of active faces that appear on the watch. Doing so also makes that face the current active one.
Change a Face’s Appearance
Many faces feature multiple options for interface items such as the color of hands and numbers, whether the design is full screen or in a circular arrangement, and more.
To change the face on the watch, do the following:
On the watch, force-touch the screen and tap the Customize button.
Swipe left or right to select which element you’re editing, such as the color.
Use the Digital Crown to scroll through the options (Figure 16).
Figure 16: Turning the crown cycles through the color options. Force-touch to exit the Customize interface and then tap the screen to return to the active face.
Set Always On Options
Starting with the Apple Watch Series 5, the Always On setting controls what’s displayed when the watch is in its passive state. On the watch, go to Settings 
> Display & Brightness > Always On; in the iPhone Watch app, go to Display & Brightness > Always On.
When Always On is activated, the time is shown in a simplified, low-power design. If you don’t want casual viewers to see some personal information, such as appointments or heart rate data, enable the Hide Sensitive Complications option (Figure 17).
Set Up and Use Complications
Some faces include complications, elements that show additional information or launch apps. You can add or remove these or use their options to change colors, or pick layout styles. Not all faces include spaces for complications, but for ones that do, you can configure them on the watch or in the Watch app on the iPhone. On the watch, do the following:
Force-touch the face and then tap the Customize button.
Tap an outlined item to select it and use the Digital Crown to scroll through the options (Figure 18). If any third-party apps offer complications, they show up as you scroll.
Figure 18: Choose a different set of information for the middle group, outlined in green. Some faces include multiple customizations; in the figure, for example, swiping left (notice the indicator dots at the top of the screen; the left dot is very light) highlights the entire interface, and rotating the crown changes the color of the interface.
Force-touch the screen to return to the face selector, and then tap the face to make it active.
In the Watch app on the iPhone, the idea is the same, but with more area to work with:
Tap the design you want to edit in the My Faces row.
Tap a complication and scroll to select which app should be used in that spot (Figure 19).
Figure 19: Here I’ve changed the Middle complication from Fantastical to Dark Sky, which is previewed in the face above. Tap the Back button to apply the change.
The complications on most faces provide quick information, such as the current temperature, but they aren’t static.
Tap a complication to open a related app. For example, tapping the temperature launches the Weather app, the activity circles 
lead to the Activity app, and dates or listed events open the Calendar app.
Use Your Own Photos
Any image in your iPhone’s Photos library can be set as the watch face—even multiple photos in an album that display as a micro-slideshow. The watch grabs the photos from the album you sync to the watch via the Watch app’s settings (see View (and Capture) Photos).
To put your own photo or album on the watch face:
In the Watch app on the iPhone, go to the Face Gallery and tap the Photos face.
Under Content, tap Photos to pick your own images. (You can also stick with the default, Synced Album: Favorites, or tap Dynamic, which pulls images from recent Memories feature of the Photos app. If so, you’re done.)
In the photo picker that appears, select a category or album (such as the Watch Photos album I created).
Tap to select up to 24 photos that will be copied to the watch, and then tap Done (Figure 20).
Figure 20: Select which photos are copied to the watch. Optionally set whether the time is positioned on the top or bottom of the screen, and which two complications should appear above and below the time. You can also set these options on the watch when you force-touch the face and tap Customize.
If needed, tap any of the photos and then move or scale them so they’re positioned in the active area as you wish; tap Done.
Tap Add to include the face in your set and make it the active face.
When you wake the watch, a photo appears as the backdrop—if the image is a Live Photo, pressing the screen makes it move. For the Photo Album face, a new photo appears each time you wake the watch; or, tap the screen to view the next one right away.
Save a Custom Face
You can save a custom face for later use. The Modular face, for example, packs in a lot of data, but perhaps on the weekend you’d prefer to view sunrise and sunset information in the middle of the face, and replace the battery indicator with the stopwatch.
To save a custom version of a face:
Force-touch the screen to view the faces and swipe all the way to the right to select the New face. Tap the plus
sign.Rotate the Digital Crown to find the face style you want, and tap to make it active.
Force-touch again.
Tap the Customize button and set up the face as you’d like.
To remove a saved face, force-touch to view it, swipe up, and then tap the Remove button that appears (Figure 21).
