If you just purchased the Apple Watch series 8, there are a variety of hacks that can help you get the most out of your new wearable. Read on for some guidance on our favorite Apple Watch series 8 hacks to help you make the most out of it.
1. Setting up your Apple Watch activity rings
For the vast majority of people, the Apple Watch is first and foremost a fitness-focused wearable. The key to this is a trio of rings each represented by a different color: red for move, green for exercise, and blue for stand.
By default, the green exercise ring closes when you log 30 minutes of intense activity, the blue stand or roll ring closes when you move around for at least one minute of 12 different hours, and the red move ring closes when you meet your personal goal for active calories burned in a day.
Apple also offers you the ability to customize your exercise and stand goals. Maybe you’re recovering from an injury and 12 stand hours paired with 30 minutes of exercise is too much for your body to handle. People have also been calling on Apple to integrate rest days into the Apple Watch rings system, and this feature at least gives users more control over their goals.
Follow the steps below to change your Apple Watch move, exercise, and stand goals:
- On your Apple Watch, open the Activity app.
- Scroll down to the bottom and find the “Change Goals” button.
- Use the or – buttons to adjust your goals, or use the Digital Crown.
- Tap “OK” to confirm your changes.
The exercise ring can be lowered or raised in intervals of five, down to a minimum of 10 minutes or a maximum of 60 minutes. The stand goal can be changed in single-hour intervals, down to a minimum of six hours. You can’t increase the stand goal beyond the default 12-hour mark.
2. Customizing your watch face
Another cool Apple Watch series 8 hack is the ability to customize watch face to your liking. On your watch face, you can add bits of information known as complications, including things such as weather, activity data, heart rate information, and much more. The easiest way to build an Apple Watch face is with the Apple Watch app on iPhone.
You can find the entire library of watch faces in the “Face Gallery” tab of the app, and as you build them, you can add faces to your personal collection. Once you create multiple watch faces, you can swipe between them from your Apple Watch, making it easy to adjust on the fly for different scenarios.
3. Apple Watch App Store
Another Apple Watch Series 8 hack most people don’t know is that you can find apps built specifically for the Watch in the watchOS App Store.
- Press the digital crown on your Apple Watch.
- Look for the App Store icon and tap on it. Here, you’ll be able to easily find and install dedicated Apple Watch applications without using your iPhone at all.
4. Sharing your activity
Another great Apple Watch series 8 hack is the ability to share your activity data with friends and family. When you do this, you can see when your friends complete workouts, how much progress they’ve made towards their goals, and when they earn new awards.
To share your Apple Watch activity data with others, follow the steps below:
- Start the Fitness app on your iPhone.
- Tap the sharing icon located at the bottom-right corner.
- Tap the “ ” button located at the top corner.
- Start typing a name, then tap the name you’d like to add. If the other person has an Apple Watch the name will turn red.
- Hit the Send button, then wait for your friend to accept your Activity request. Once accepted, you’ll receive a notification on your Apple Watch.
5. Set up health monitoring features
The Apple Watch series 8 is not only useful for deliberately tracking your fitness progress, but also for passively monitoring it in the background.
Fall Detection
One such feature is called Fall Detection, and it uses the gyroscope and accelerometer to detect if you’ve fallen, and more importantly, if you’ve fallen and cannot get back up. By default, Fall Detection is disabled for users under the age of 65, but you can manually enable it by following the steps below:
- Start the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.
- Go to Emergency SOS.
- Find the Fall Detection toggle. Apple warns that more physically active users may trigger Fall Detection even when you haven’t fallen. This is due to high impact activity, and may appear as a fall.
- Tap Confirm.
6. Heart
Another cool Apple Watch series 8 hack is that you can enable a suite of features that will allow your Watch to help you look after your heart.
- Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.
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Find the Heart category. In this section, you can enable the following features:
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Install the ECG app for taking electrocardiograms from your Apple Watch
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Set up Cardio Fitness Levels and notifications, which are a strong indicator of your overall health.
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Irregular Rhythm notifications for receiving a notification when Apple Watch identifies multiple heart rhythms that may be atrial fibrillation.
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High Heart Rate notifications for receiving a notification when Apple Watch detects a heart rate that rises to a certain level while you appear inactive.
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Low Heart Rate notifications for receiving notification when Apple Watch detects a heart rate that falls below 50 bpm for 10 minutes.
7. Blood oxygen
The Apple Watch Series 8 offers support for taking blood oxygen readings with your device. Apple Watch can also take measurements in the background so you have data to regularly reflect on.
- Launch the Watch app on your iPhone,
- Find the Blood Oxygen category and tap on it.
- Enable the settings as you desire.
8. Rein in your notifications
The Apple Watch series 8 makes it pretty easy to stay on top of your notifications. Every time an app sends a push notification, you’ll get a tap on the wrist and hear a sound. For many people, however, this can actually be overwhelming and unnecessary.
To manage notifications on your Apple Watch, follow the steps below:
- Start the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.
- Choose the Notifications category.
Here, you can see a list of applications and manage notifications as necessary. My recommendation is to limit notifications as much as possible on your Apple Watch, otherwise, you might become overwhelmed.
9. Check out Apple Fitness
Apple Fitness offers access to a library of hundreds of on-demand workouts across popular categories such as running, cycling, HIIT, rowing, yoga, and more.
Apple Fitness features deep integration with Apple Watch series 8, showing live data from your Apple Watch on the screen during your workout. Plus, if you recently got a new Apple Watch, you likely have three months of free access to the service.
You can find Apple Fitness in the Fitness app on your iPhone or Apple TV. It’s also available on the iPad, and you can download it from the iPadOS App Store to get started.
10. Rearrange Control Center
Just like Control Center on your iPhone, Control Center on the Apple Watch is where you go to quickly adjust settings like do not disturb and airplane mode and to activate the flashlight.
You may find the default list of options in the Control Center isn’t the best fit for how you use your watch, however, and you want to rearrange the list. For me, that means moving the Bedtime toggle from near the bottom of the list to the top. That way when I want to track my sleep over the weekend when I don’t have sleep goals set, I can swipe up and tap the icon.
To access the Control Center on your watch series 8:
- Swipe up from the bottom of the watch face, or when in an app you can long-press on the bottom of the screen until you see Control Center start to slide up, after which you just need to slide your finger up to access it. The same trick works to view your notifications from anywhere.
- Change the order, or hide some buttons in the Control Center by tapping the Edit button at the bottom of the list. The icons will begin to jiggle and show a red minus sign to hide an option. Drag and drop the icons into your preferred order, or tap the red minus button to remove the option altogether.
- When you’re done, tap Done or press the Digital Crown on the side of your watch to go back to the watch face.