It took approximately 5 hours to upgrade my Series 5 Apple Watch to the new watchOS 10.0.
How much of that was the actual update vs the download all the apps again? Just curiousā¦and does it have to stay on the charger the whole time or just for the actual watchOS update part?
Mine took a shockingly short time. I didnāt time it, but I noticed it starting to download 1.2 GB at some point and when I went back to the charger to check it later (maybe less than an hour?), it was done.
It was the same for me with my Ultra - 1.2 GB, and the update took about an hour to finish.
As I said in another thread, I am keeping my backup Series 5 on watchOS 9 until I upgrade my 13 Pro next spring, as my backup phone is an iPhone X. Iāll want to keep the S5 on a version that will allow it to pair with the X if I need to. After I upgrade, the 13 Pro will be my backup phone, so Iāll upgrade the S5 then.
Length of time maybe related to watch model and what chip it uses. My series 8 was done in about 30 minutes.
I should add, though, that after the install was finished, liked Duane, my watch was showing incomplete info - complications were blank, when I went to edit faces the complications could be selected in the Watch app, but the preview stayed blank, etc. I didnāt time how long it came back to normal, but maybe another hour.
I said āapproximately 5 hours,ā because I didnāt really time it. When the upgrade started it said it was going to take 5 hours. I know those estimates are not accurate, but in fact it did run on for several hours. Iām only talking about the time from when I started the upgrade to when my phone said the upgrade was done. Like others have mentioned, it took additional time for the on-watch apps to be brought up to speed. Itās possible that a great deal of the time was spent downloading the update. It was reported to be something like 2.5 GB and since I started the upgrade soon after Apple released it, I may have been competing with lots of other people for bandwidth. Perhaps if I had waited a day it wouldnāt have taken so long. My other devices updated in less than an hour each.
Did my wifeās today. I had to approve the terms and conditions on her iPhone. It took about 30 minutes on her Watch SE. My Series 8 took about 10 minutes, but that was the beta. It updated to the release automatically last night.
Wonder if having an older watch may take slower. I remember the painful update times on my Series 3 which would take an hour or so, and many times the update would fail for lack of free RAM.
Entirely likely, though Iām still using a Series 5 like Duane. But perhaps my Internet connection is a lot faster at ~300 Mbps.
Updated my wifeās Series 5 and my SE - it took about 30 minutes each for both. But I had to manually start the update - both iPhones said that the automatic update had failed because the watches were not on the charger - but of course they both were. I have had this failure many times for updates, but usually I just wait and eventually it works. This time my wife wanted the Snoopy watch face - and that needs both iOS17 and the Watch 10 update to work. Now we have Snoopy! (She has been using the Mini Mouse face - and Mini can read the time, but only when she wants - that function would disappear for months and the. reappear again. I asked a Store āGeniusā and they said they knew about it, but had no solution. Maybe Snoopy willl be more reliable.)
David
Gotta say Iām not impressed by watchOS 10. Most of what I access regularly is a level or two deeper, the UI is slower, and many screens are more cluttered. The switch of button functionality and the focus on widgets is thoroughly unproductive for my uses.
Iām not all that happy about the button change, either - I used the dock a lot, and use control center rarely, so its switch to the side button is less useful for me. And I miss the double-click of the crown to switch between apps - again, I used this a lot before. (The replacement multitask view isnāt bad, though - just an extra tap now.)
But the Smart Stack I like - for one reason, I can now use a Photo or Portrait watchface more often. I rarely did, because there werenāt enough complications for me, but now I can use the smart stack to look at what would have needed complications when I need that info.
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Apple says the whole time, and Iāve not wanted to test out what happens if you take the watch off the charger after the it starts installing the update.
Also, Apple says the watch must be charged to 50% or more as well as be on the charger in order to install updates.
Add me as a āme tooā except for opposite reasons. Maybe itās just muscle memory but I canāt tell you how many times Iāve swiped up looking for the Control Centre. I just find the side button fiddly (I have a series 8). I never use the dock and find the scrolling widgets kind of annoying when I inadvertantly move the digital crown.
I became an instant fan of watchOS 10. I like the improved control of reading audiobooks (from my iPhone). The control center button access speeds locating my iPhone, which is in a black case which always lands face down and difficult to see. Screening incoming calls and stopping alarms are essentially unchanged for me. And, I was not forced to choose a new face.
Iām not a big fan. The first problem is that the list of apps (I donāt use the icons because Iām old and theyāre too small) now always opens at the top. Most of the time, the only app I use is the stopwatch, and if it was the last app I used, it would be the first one I saw when I opened the app list. Now it opens at 1Password and I have to scroll through all the other apps (that I mostly donāt use) to get down to the apps whose names start with an āS.ā The other thing I donāt like is that the Stopwatch app has been Fubrād. The buttons have been made teeny tiny and jammed so far into the bottom corners that I can never get them to respond. The buttons used to be bigger and not jammed into the corners, and the old buttons worked the first time you pressed them. So, for most of my hands-on uses, WatchOS 10 is a loser.
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Itās always hard when an interface changes from what you are used to. Over time, you may accommodate yourself to it and, maybe, even discover it works better for you. I am not yet at that stage, but I have learned several accommodations. In your case, there are several ways to activate Stopwatch without needing to scroll the app list:
- Call it up via Siri
- Make it a complication on your regular watch face (if it allows complications)
- Add its widget form to the widget list and pin that widget to the top.
3a) Make it part of the favorite widgets widget (a horizontal bar with icons for 3 widgets and pin that to the top of the widget list).
Once you start running the stopwatch, it appears above your widgets and can be reached by scrolling down from the watch face. The running time is displayed with a button on the right to pause it. tapping anywhere else will open the app.
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Yes, another change I dislike. In addition to the other options listed, there is a new interface change. You can double-click the crown to bring up a card interface of the most recently used apps, and scroll with the wheel (or swipe) to find stopwatch and tap it to start it, rather than use the list of apps.
To add the stopwatch to the Smart Stack of widgets that opens when you swipe from the bottom or scroll the crown from a watchface. Long-press on the widget screen to activate edit mode, click the +, and add stopwatch to the active widgets. If you click on the small pin icon to the right, you can even keep it pinned to the top of the stack, if you happen to use the stopwatch often.
Iāve also seen people complain that the stopwatch app is now white background with no option to make it black - which can be glaring if you use it in the dark.
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Yes exactly so now I happily use the Snoopy face, which could be the greatest feature Apple has released anywhere all year. Less distraction, more fun, more happiness.
In exchange, I piled up my stack to compensate for my missing complications. And itās fantastic that they made accessing the stack as simple as a spin of the crown. But why do they limit the stack?? And what do I do about essential complications like AnyList that have no stack alternative (not that I have stack space left anyway)? And also due to lack of stack space, gone is my ability to glance down and see audio decibel level. Apple has left me screwed there.
Now, swiping between faces used to be my way of effectively accessing more complications. But Apple took that away! That feels like wearing handcuffs. Itās not like they replaced that gesture. Itās just gone. Switching between faces used to be more like a Smart Stack. Now itās something too awkward to do for regular use.
But close in line for gripes is the side button lag. Single press brings up control center; fine. My more common use is the double press for Apple Pay. But that double press always presents the control center for a bit first before launching Apple Pay! So annoying!