So you’ve just got yourself the Apple Watch Series 8. And do you know what time it is? It’s time we set this up Apple Watch Series 8 in the correct way. And I’m writing this article for you so that you can get the most from Apple Watch Series 8 from day one. And I’ve chosen the very best tips and tricks that the internet has to offer and place them in a very specific order.

And you’ll see why I’ve done it this way. Once we get to the end of the article and just before we begin, I just want to show you one quick thing. Did you know if you hold two fingers down on the watch Face, it reads you the time? And check this out. If you go into the Watch app on your phone and scroll down to where it says Clock.

Taptic Time

If you’re too lazy to even open your eyes or open your ears to listen to what time it is, you can go to tactic time here and actually set up vibrations that will help you tell the time. And if you can read Morse code, you’re going to love this.

Embarrassing Notifications

So let’s not waste any more time and get into tip number one. So do you know what you don’t need more of in this day and age? Distractions.

So in Samuel L. Jackson fashion, one thing you should absolutely, positively do first is manage your notifications. So I recommend you add the Apple Watch app to your home screen. For now, I’ve added it here and I recommend you do the same. You can delete it later on after the article if you want.

But the reason I recommend you add it now is because we’re going to be coming back to this in this article. So here’s the thing. If you happen to get an unexpected embarrassing alert on your wrist, do you want the person next to you to be able to read it? If the answer to that is no, then you should definitely do this. First, go to Notifications, and then here where it says tap to show full notifications.

Switch that on. Now, what will happen is when you get notifications on your watch, it will be an abbreviated version and then it will expand to the full version when you tap the alert.

Showdown

So here’s tip number two. So the reality for most people is that you’re going to raise your wrist in order to check your watch unless you’re Mr. Fantastic from The Fantastic Four, in which case you could probably bend your hair to read your watch.

But if that’s not you, then you’re going to want to do this tip and it will save you power. And that’s a little bonus. So check this out. Go to notifications and then go to this section here where it says Show notifications on the wrist. Down here, you want to switch off all of the apps that are not incredibly important to you.

For me, it’s around 95% of the apps. So I’ve already gone through this already and I’ve turned a bunch of them off. But one of them that I’m definitely going to leave on is this one, Pay By Phone. So that’s an app that allows you to pay for parking in London. And I definitely do want alerts when those parking attendant vultures start circling my car. So think about this one carefully and pick and choose the apps that you do want to alert you, even when your wrist is down.

Advanced Notifications

If you do this from day one, it will improve your experience on your Apple Watch Series 8. So trust me when I say this do it once, do it right, and then you don’t have to do it again.

So, staying in the notifications section within the Apple Watch Series 8 app, scroll all the way down to the section that says mirror iPhone alerts from Switch off all unneeded apps immediately. And it was actually amazing to me out of the box, how many of these apps were all on that was completely not important?

And they were blowing up my wrist and the watch was dying real quick on batteries straight away. I’ve switched these all off, that has improved battery life a lot. So work your way through the list.

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If there’s anything here that you think is not important, at all, then switch them off. But make sure you leave the important ones on, like this one here, pizza gogo. Because there are very few things in life that are more important than a pizza. And here’s a little bonus tip. If we scroll back up a bit to the section where we have all of the Apple official apps at the top here, each one of these has a sub-menu and each one is slightly different.

So in this article, I don’t have time to go through every single one. But I do recommend you spend a bit of time looking at these settings here and seeing if there’s anything you want to adjust when it comes to notifications. For example, the heart rate might be something you want to look at if that’s a concern for you. You can actually set alerts for low heart rate and high heart rate and stuff like that. So spend some time looking at the official apps as well.

Look at the notifications for those. Most of them are quite important, so don’t go switching all of those off. But definitely take a look at these.

Learn The App Icons

So depending on whether this is your first Apple Watch Series 8 or not, you might want to consider doing this from day one and then maybe changing it later on. And as you become more familiar with the app icons on the Apple Watch Series 8, we can actually switch it back later on. So check this out. If we go into the Apple Watch Series 8 app and we go to app view right now, everything is in grid mode. So that means we can sort of zoom out, zoom in, and find the apps that we’re looking for.

The problem is, if you don’t know what these icons are, it’s going to be different for you. So list view is what I recommend on day one. And what this will do is put all of the apps into alphabetical order so they’re much easier to navigate if you don’t know what the icons mean.

And later on, as you become a master app icon Jedi, and you no longer need the words to figure out what things are, you can switch it back to the grid view because the grid view is actually a bit quicker if you know what you’re doing. But time is of the essence.

Setup The Side Key

So I’m going to tell you something you probably already know, but this little button at the side here, the side key, opens the dock on the Apple Watch Series 8, and this is a quick way to search for your favorite apps unless you switch it to recent, in which case this will go straight to the most recently used apps.

Now let me show you how to do that, and setting it up as Recent might be very useful for some of you guys, but for others, you might prefer the favorites. I prefer the favorites. And what I recommend you do from day one is hit Edit in the top right corner here, delete the ones you don’t need, choose the ones you do need, and order them in a very specific way that makes sense to you.

And if you use these little bars down here, you can move things up and down through the list. So I absolutely recommend you do this on day one because it will save you time. And as you know, time is more valuable than money because nobody can give you time back.

Of course, I’m safe from fire for you guys. So this is a quick one to help you save power and be mindful of your choices. Here go to general. Here go to the background.

Apple Watch Series 8 App Refresh

Now, this is a list of apps that will refresh in the background on your watch continuously throughout time unless you switch them off. So you need to go through this list and switch off the apps that are not important to you. Now, you might feel that if you switch some of these off, you’re somehow missing out. Don’t think like that, because the next time you open the app on the Apple Watch Series 8, it will manually refresh.

Except for this time, it will only do it on your watch. And just to be clear, that’s me saying you are manually in control of when they refresh on your Apple Watch Series 8. I hope that makes sense. So this tip is a massive battery saver. In fact, it may be the greatest battery-saver tweak that you can make to the app Apple Watch Series 8, but it is going to be a trade-off.

It’s a little bit of style and a little bit of ease of use for an extra battery. So if we go to the Apple Watch Series 8 app on the phone, this time, we’re going to display brightness. Now, I recommend you customize these settings however you feel comfortable. What I want to show you guys is this, the Always On the menu. Now, if you turn this off, it will instantly and dramatically improve the battery life of your Apple Watch Series 8.

And I know from experience on Android Watches that when you switch off the Always on Display, it literally doubles the battery life. But the other cool thing about doing this, and another reason why I recommend you do this, is it actually opens up an awesome feature on the watch. Check this out.

So when the screen goes out like this, you can still read the time. And check this out using the crown, you can actually turn up the brightness ever so slightly and read the time and then turn it back down again whenever you want. That feature is not available unless you do this.

Apple Watch 8 Plus Airpods Equals Ear Defenders

So here’s a question for you. Have you ever casually been strolling down the street minding your own business, like Toby Maguire and Spiderman, and suddenly a police siren goes off and makes you jump? Well, if you happen to have the Apple AirPods Pro and the Apple Watch Series 8 together, then actually the two combined can prevent this from happening in the future. So to enable this feature, let’s go back into the Apple Watch Series 8 app on the phone.

This time we’re going to sound and haptics. And here is where it says Headphone safety. Tap on that. And then we have this little switch here that reduces loud sounds. Now, what this will do is use your Apple Watch Series 8 to measure the sound outside and adjust the audio through your AirPods.

And I even heard MKBHD saying you could actually stand next to a really loud speaker. And this will actually work together to bring that speaker volume down to the level that it should be so that it doesn’t damage your ears. So now, next time a loud sound radiates around you, your watch and your AirPods Pro will protect your eardrums from unexpected impact.

A Safety Measure

So, although we’d like to think the world is full of nice people. Unfortunately, that’s just not true.

There are a bunch of kids out there who would be quite happy to steal your shiny new Apple Watch Series 8. And if they do that, they could potentially also be stealing your personal data. So here is a safety measure that I absolutely recommend you put in place in the Apple Watch Series 8 app on your phone. Scroll down to where it says Passcode. Make sure you’ve got a passcode set up.

So what I want to draw your attention to here is this erased data. Enabling this means that if someone takes your Apple Watch Series 8 and enters the code wrong ten times in a row, all of your personal data will be deleted. Disclaimer, if you’re a forgetful person, do not turn this on. It’s only four digits, but the mind is like an attic. It gets full because sometimes we forget to get rid of old information.

If that sounds like you, don’t switch this on your Apple Watch Series 8. But for everyone else, I do recommend it.

Who are You Gonna Call?

So did you know if you hold the side key down for 2 seconds, you can actually make an emergency call from the Apple Watch Series 8? And you can even use a compass backtrack if you get lost. But here’s the question.

If there’s something strange going on in your neighborhood and there’s something wrong and it doesn’t look good, who are you going to call? And yes, you could set this up as a pizza delivery number for those emergency pizza orders. But don’t do that and let me tell you why. So if you’re rocking the latest Apple Watch Series 8, then you’ll know you’ve got crash detection. And if worst comes to worst, who are the people that need to know first?

That’s the question you’ve got to ask yourself. And once you’ve found the answer to that, do this. Go into the Apple Watch Series 8 app on your phone, and scroll to an emergency. SOS review the options that you have. One little bonus tip if you’re the type of person who’s worried about falling over, or maybe you’re accident prone and you’re always falling over, switch on full detection, always on.

But here is what I want to show you. And you may have already set this up, but double check it. Just to be safe. Go to edit contacts in Health. Here you can add all of your important medical data, including blood group or any allergies that you might have.

Let’s say you’re allergic to Petley cillin. This will be invaluable to a medical team if something bad happens. And this is also very important. Add emergency contact. Now be sensible about this because if you do crash, the last thing you’re going to need is a double pepperoni with extra cheese.

Both Hands Wash The Face

So this, in a lot of people’s eyes, will be the first thing to do and that’s to customize the Apple Watch Series 8 face. And the easiest way to do this by far is not on the watch itself but on the phone. Just like all of the other tips that I showed you so far in the Apple Watch Series 8 app on the phone. At the bottom, you’ll see a face gallery. And this is the entire Apple Watch Series 8 face library.

Now do keep in mind you can choose several watch faces and not just one. So we can select a bunch of different styles. Maybe one for working out, one for when you’re sort of dressing up. You can add a bunch of these and switch back and forth between them on the Apple Watch Series 8 whenever you want. So don’t feel like you’re stuck with the one that you choose.

Now, once you’ve selected a couple of watch faces, go back to this section. Here is my watch at the bottom, and you’ll see all of your watches’ faces across the top. Now, if you want to customize these watch faces and make them more your own, it’s very easy to do. So I really like this lunar watch face. I’m going to tap that.

I can change the color accent on the watch to whatever I want. I can change the calendar to Chinese, to Hebrew to Islamic. I can even go from analog to digital. And we can even customize the complications on the watch here to whatever we want them to be. So let’s say I don’t care about the UV index and I do care more about voice memos.

I have a good idea. I can activate voice memos quickly by hitting the complication up in the top right corner of the watch face. So go through all of the settings on your chosen watch face and customize these features so that it makes sense to you. And if this sounds too complicated, you don’t have to do it. A lot of the default watch faces look pretty awesome without any customization.

Like this one, for example, this menacing mouse. So this is an important aspect to consider and I’m not going to tell you you must download this or you must download that or the world will explode or something. Instead, I’m just going to show you guys the door and it’s up to you if you want to walk through it. So check this out. Go to the Discover tab on the Apple Watch Series 8 app.

And at the bottom here, you’ll see Explore watch faces. Now, you can do this on the watch, but it’s far easier here. Here is the full library of all of the apps for the Apple Watch Series 8. A couple of things that you might want to install is maybe YouTube music if that’s your default music streaming service. There’s a bunch of interesting stuff here and there’s some featured stuff at the top.

And this one looks pretty interesting to me. Night sky. You know, sometimes I stare at the stars and I think, what must it be like to be that rich? Okay, that was a bad joke. Anyway, on to the next one.

Talk To The Head

So here’s the question. Do you ever get annoying phone calls from random people at random times? I’m assuming you do or you have in the past. Now here’s a quick way to silence those nuisances without having to push any buttons. All you need to do to mute a call on the Apple Watch Series 8 is put your hand over the display and that will silence the call. Talk to the hand, because you ain’t talking to me.

Bonus Tip 1

Now, the Apple Watch Series 8 is maybe the greatest consumer health monitoring device ever made today. But the display is quite small, so I do recommend you add the Apple Health Widget to your home screen somewhere. You can see I’ve got it here just with my VPN, and my Google search, and this allows me to monitor what’s going on on the watch.

And this also doubles up as a shortcut to the Health app so I can expand all the information and really get a clear view of what’s going on instead of trying to figure it out here on the watch.

The easiest way to set this up, as you probably already know, is just to hold your finger down on a stack or an empty part of the screen. Go to Edit Stack, hit the plus at the top here, and then look for your help app or search for it here at the top, drag it onto the stack, and there you go. I highly recommend you do this.

Another bonus tip is to add the battery life widget as well. So you can see here I’ve got the battery life, the watch life, the earbuds, the AirPods case life, and then the AirPods themselves, all visible all at once so you can keep an eye on your power supply. He’s taking the Mick Henny.

Bonus Tip 2 Gestures

And here is another bonus tip for you guys. I think you’re going to find this one pretty damn interesting. So if you go to Accessibility here and then scroll down where it says Assistive Touch, tap on that and enable it.

What you can now do is unlock gestures on the watch. So if you’re too lazy to lift a finger and touch the screen, you can do this instead. Hand gestures. And as you can see here, we got a pinch, double pinch, clench, double clench. As you can see we can set the action to activate these controls.

Right now it’s double clench. And if you hit the Learn More, it will talk you through step by-step how to use these. So when you hit try on Apple Watch Series 8, it’s kind of like a tutorial. So pinch number one. It registered double pinch clench and double clench. So now using these techniques, you can actually operate the watch like so.

So I’m not saying you should absolutely use that feature, I’m just showing you that it’s possible and there are various reasons why you might want to use it. Maybe your fingers don’t work quite as well as they used to, and maybe those gestures are easier than actually fiddling around on the display. Or maybe you’re a giant and your finger is bigger than the entire screen itself. And I hope you guys got some value out of this article.