Apple Watch: Control Center

Douglas Walker: Hello, my name is Douglas Walker. Today we'll be checking out our Apple Watch Control Center. And our Control Center will quickly get us to some of our most frequently used settings and features. Now, before we get started, we'll want to make sure that our voiceover setting is turned on. And the easiest way to turn on voiceover is in our Apple Watch app on our iPhone, down in our accessibility settings. So how about we jump right in and check out our Apple Watch Control Center? Alright, we will use our side button to open our Control Center. Now we can find our side button on the right hand side of our Apple Watch and just below our large digital crown. Now it's good to know that our side button is really flat or flush against the side of our watch, so it may be a little difficult to feel at first. Yeah, our side button will do several different things, and this will depend on how long or the number of times that we press it. And if we press our side button just once, we can quickly launch our Control Center. So we'll go ahead and just press our side button once.

VoiceOver: iPhone connected. Accessibility.

Douglas Walker: Okay, our Control Center is now open. And the first item in our Control Center is a notification that tells us if our Apple Watch is connected to our iPhone. And we heard voiceover announced that our watch is currently connected. Now some of the items here in our Control Center might differ just a bit if you happen to be using a different model Apple Watch. However, we'll still move through our Control Center in just the same way. So let's go ahead and just right swipe through our Control Center to check out the types of settings that we have here. Okay, so we'll go ahead and just right swipe.

VoiceOver: Wifi, switch button on. Double tap to toggle setting, actions available.

Douglas Walker: Yeah, here is our wifi button, and voiceover announced that it's currently turned on. So in our case, we know that we're connected to our wifi network. And we could just double tap to quickly turn our wifi off. You know, now we also heard voiceover announce that we have actions available, so we could just swipe up or down our screen to cycle through all of our actions here. Now our actions will give us the ability to edit any of the items that we want to appear here in our Control Center, as well as the order that they'll appear, which is really handy for us. However, we've also been given an edit button at the very end of our Control Center list. So we've been given a couple of different ways for editing our Control Center. Okay, so we'll go ahead and just right swipe from here.

VoiceOver: Airplane mode, switch button off. Double tap to toggle setting, actions available.

Douglas Walker: Here we find our airplane mode button. And we could actually just double tap to turn it on right here. However, it's also great to know that in our Apple Watch app settings, we have the ability to set our Apple Watch to mirror our iPhone. So this means if we turn on our airplane mode on our iPhone, airplane mode would automatically turn on right here on our Apple Watch, which is super handy for us. Okay, we'll go ahead and just right swipe.

VoiceOver: 100% battery power, button. Double tap to view details, actions available.

Douglas Walker: Alright, here we're told our battery status, which is kind of good to know, right? And we're also told that we can get even more information about our battery by simply performing our double tap. Okay, so we'll go ahead and just right swipe.

VoiceOver: Ping iPhone, switch button off. Double tap to toggle setting actions available.

Douglas Walker: Yeah, this is our ping iPhone button. And I've actually used this feature quite a few times lately. If we double tap our ping iPhone button, our iPhone will make a pinging sound. So if our iPhone just so happens to have misplaced itself, well, we can actually find it from right here. And how great is that, right? Okay, so we'll go ahead and just right swipe.

VoiceOver: Flashlight, switch button off. Double tap to toggle setting, actions available.

Douglas Walker: Yeah, here we find our flashlight. Now, this is really nice. If we turn on our flashlight button, our Apple Watch face will turn a really bright white. And you know, it really is surprising at just how much light our Apple Watch puts off. So this could be a big help if we happen to be in a dimly lit area. Alright, so let's go ahead and right swipe.

VoiceOver: Focus, switch button off. Double tap to toggle setting, actions available.

Douglas Walker: And here's our focus button. And if we turn on our focus, all of our alerts and notifications will be silenced. And of course we won't be disturbed by any of that, right? Okay, so we'll go ahead and just right swipe.

VoiceOver: Silent mode, switch button off. Double tap to toggle setting, actions available.

Douglas Walker: And here's our silent mode button. Now this is kind of nice if we want to silence our watch sounds. And this might be handy if we're in a meeting. Now, we're still gonna feel all of our vibrations, but all of our sounds will be silenced. Okay, let's go ahead and just right swipe.

VoiceOver: Theater mode, switch button off. Double tap to toggle setting. Swipe up or down to select a custom action, then double tap to activate.

Douglas Walker: Okay, here's our theater mode button. And turning on theater mode will silence all of our Apple Watch sounds. Now we'll still get our vibrations for all of our notifications, just like we do when we turn on silent mode. However, when we turn on our theater mode button, our Apple Watch will remain dim and it won't wake or light up when we raise our wrist. Now we can still check our time, if we like. However, we'll have to touch or physically tap our Apple Watch face to check our time. Okay, so let's go ahead and just right swipe.

VoiceOver: Water lock, switch button off. Double tap to toggle setting. Swipe up or down to select a custom action, then double tap to activate.

Douglas Walker: Yeah, here's our water lock button. Now if we know that we're about to take a swim or know that our Apple Watch will be submerged in water, well, we can turn on water lock right here, which is really nice. Okay, so let's go ahead and just right swipe.

VoiceOver: AirPlay, switch button on. Double tap to toggle setting. Swipe up or down to select a custom action, then double tap to activate.

Douglas Walker: Great, here is our AirPlay button. Now double tapping AirPlay will give us a list of devices in which we can AirPlay or stream our Apple Watch's audio. We'll see all of our Bluetooth devices like our AirPods or our other Bluetooth headphones listed here, which is really great if maybe we want to place a phone call or listen to our Apple Music. I'll tell you, I AirPlay my Apple Watch to my AirPods a lot because it helps gimme a lot of privacy when I'm using voiceover. Okay, we'll go ahead and just right swipe.

VoiceOver: Edit button.

Douglas Walker: Yeah, we mentioned earlier that we have an edit button. And again, our edit button gives us the ability to edit the items that we want to appear here in our Control Center, as well as the order that we want them to be displayed. Now we might wanna check this out and see what other types of items can be added to our Control Center. Or we might even discover that there are items that are currently in our Control Center that we just don't use very much. We could use our edit button here to remove those from our list if we like. Okay, before we end today, let's quickly talk about how to close our Control Center. All we need to do to close our Control Center is just press our side button again. So we'll go ahead and just press our side button here.

VoiceOver: 11:33 AM.

Douglas Walker: Great, and there you go. Our Control Center has closed and we've been placed right back on our watch face. You know, it's pretty easy to see just how convenient it is to have all of our favorite controls and features right at our fingertips. Again, my name is Douglas Walker. Take care, and I'll see you next time.