Setting up your Apple Watch for the first time - tips and tricks

As I wrote a while ago I’m really happy with my new Apple Watch. It’s actually been a while since I set it up for the first time and I’ve been tweaking the setup ever since so today I decided to share with you my tips and tricks. Hope you’ll find them useful:

Tip 1: Wear your Apple Watch upside down. Seriously. When you unpack your Apple Watch and put it on the wrist, the default way is having digital crown on the right side of the Apple Watch. Well, this setting can be changed and it’s actually more natural to use the digital crown with a thumb. Just go to your Apple Watch app on the iPhone and go to Settings and Watch orientation and change to “digital crown on the left side”. I’ve set this a few weeks ago and I love it.

Tip 2: Make the current app your main Watch-face. Let me explain: you pull out the Apple Watch and open an app, after a few moments with it you stop using the watch, it goes dark, now you pull out the watch again and you see your watch-face, and not the app you’ve been using before. That’s the default behavior. I prefer to see the app again. This way I can open my Nozbe for watch app and have my priority list of tasks open every time I pull out the watch. This way my Nozbe app becomes my watch-face. Go to “general”, “activate on wrist rise” and choose “resume previous activity”.

Tip 3: Disable notifications gradually… on both the iPhone and the Watch. I wrote about notifications before. When I got my Apple Watch I wanted to really disable notifications on it right away. Only to leave the most needed ones. In the end I just didn’t do anything and let all the notifications arrive to my Apple Watch. When I saw a notification on my watch that I didn’t want to receive, I’d think twice and usually also disable it on my iPhone. Now, after a few weeks I’ve greatly reduced the number of notifications I receive on both devices. Sweet.

Note that you can set up your notifications in iPhone’s settings app and in the Apple Watch app on the iPhone separately.

Question: What are your best Apple Watch tips and tricks?