Made a cool Apple Watch face? Share it with your friends!

Many people wonder if they can share Apple Watch faces – and the answer is yes! Sharing Apple Watch faces was a feature first introduced in watchOS 7 and it’s one of the best and most little-used features.

Customing watch faces are one of the coolest features of the Apple Watch. Sadly, the Apple Watch will turn seven this year, but Apple still doesn’t have an Apple Watch face store, where you can buy and download third-party watch faces.

Many people are confused why Apple STILL doesn’t have any kind of Watch Face Store, but only the company knows for sure.

However, Apple does have a way of discovering new watch faces – provide you have watchOS 7 or higher.

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That’s because watchOS 7 introduced Apple Watch face sharing. This allows you to create a new watch face (from the faces available) and share your creation with a friend. Of course “create” is a bit misleading. When I say create I mean customize: picking a built-in watch face and then customizing it with the built-in options including styles and complications.

Any watch face you create you can share with friends and family – provided they have an Apple Watch too, of course. And there are actually two ways to share watch faces: via the Apple Watch itself or via the iPhone.

How To Share Apple Watch Faces: Via The Apple Watch

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Let’s start with sharing watch faces via the Apple Watch itself. Honestly, this is probably the least good way to share a watch face, but it’s also the one that is most quick to use because your watch is literally strapped to your wrist at all times.

Before you can share a watch face, you must have one customized. And once you’ve done that, you can share it. So, if you’ve customized one or more watch faces, here’s how to share one:

1. Tap and hold your current Apple Watch face until it recess into the background where it enters the Edit screen.
2. Swipe through the list of your current watch faces until you find the one you want to share.
3. Under the icon of the watch face, next to the Edit button, you’ll see a share button. Tap it.
4. In the New Message window that appears, tap Add Contact and select a Messages contact you want to send the watch face to.
5. Next, tap the name of the watch face and on the next screen choose either “Include without data” or “don’t include” for every complication on the watch face. “Include without data” will share a generic complication – not a complication with your personal data, like the heart rate complication. “Don’t include” will not share the complication – just the watch face and its customized design and style.
6. Next, tap Create Message. 
7. On the Create Message screen, enter your own message, or use one of the suggested messages.
8. Next, tap Send.

Whoever you addressed the message to will get your message along with a link they can tap to add the shared watch face to their Apple Watch.

How To Share Apple Watch Faces: Via The iPhone

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It’s convenient that you can share watch faces right on the Apple Watch. However, given the Apple Watch’s display is so small, it’s often easier to share watch faces via the iPhone and iOS 14 and higher (including iOS 15). You do this through the iPhone’s dedicated Watch app. Here’s how:

1. On your iPhone, tap the Watch app to launch it.
2. Swipe through the “My Faces” row at the top of the app on the My Watches tab.
3. When you find a face you want to share, tap it.
4. The face’s edit screen will appear. This is where you can customize the watch face. When you are ready to share it, tap the share button in the upper-right corner.
5. On the sharing panel the appears, tap Options.
6. On the next screen choose either “Include without data” or “don’t include” for every complication on the watch face. “Include without data” will share a generic complication – not a complication with your personal data, like the heart rate complication. “Don’t include” will not share the complication – just the watch face and its customized design and style.
7. Tap Done.
8. Back on the Share panel, tap the name of the person you want to share the watch face with or tap the app you want to share the watch face through and then complete entering in the details of the contact you want to share the face with.
9. Tap the Send (up arrow) button after adding your personal message below the link to your watch face.

The recipient will now get a message from you with the link to your shared watch face. When they click on it it will automatically be added to their Apple Watch.

Also, check out how to download new watch faces for Apple Watch! And check out how to use the Apple Watch’s handwashing feature! Check out How To Make A FaceTime Call On Your Apple Watch, too!

Michael Grothaus

Apple expert and novelist, Michael Grothaus has been covering tech on KnowYourMobile for the best part of 10 years. Prior to this, he worked at Apple. And before that, he was a film journalist. Michael is a published author; his book Epiphany Jones was voted as one of the best novels about Hollywood by Entertainment Weekly. Michael is also a writer at other publications including VICE and Fast Company.

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