Apple needs to squash this 3-year old bug in watchOS 27.
Mark Gurman in his latest Power On Newsletter:
After the sweeping design overhaul of iOS 26 and the debut of Liquid Glass across its platforms, Apple is working on a Snow Leopard-style update. For iOS 27 and next year’s other major operating system updates — including macOS 27 — the company is focused on improving the software’s quality and underlying performance. […]
Aiming to improve the software, engineering teams are now combing through Apple’s operating systems, hunting for bloat to cut, bugs to eliminate, and any opportunity to meaningfully boost performance and overall quality.
watchOS 27 wasn’t mentioned by name and doesn’t have the brunt of software complaints, but don’t worry, I’m here to speak up for the silent majority.
watchOS 27 has a few bugs here and there, but nothing major. However, there is one feature that is still broken, and calling it a bug is being kind.
You can call it a minor infestation.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about, once again, the hidden toggle that is “Swipe to Switch Watch Face.” This mess started with watchOS 10 and its retooling of all the buttons and swipes.
I’ve tooted my horn about this several times in the past, but attention to detail is what makes Apple, Apple. When I’m swiping between watch faces, literally right now, with my Apple Watch Ultra 3, the best Apple Watch on the market, it still feels clunky and looks bad when compared to a Series 3 Apple Watch, a watch that has mastered the swipe between watch faces even though it crawls at a snails pace in every other function.
In fact, watchOS 26 has worse animations than my Series 10 on watchOS 11. At least the complications didn’t disappear and reappear like they do on watchOS 26.
Take a look for yourself:
Series 3 on watchOS 8 - notice the smooth transitioning of the seconds hand when swiping between analog faces, and how the time is always correct.
Series 10 on watchOS 11 - each swipe has to load the time and complications from scratch, but complications don’t disappear and reappear.
Ultra 3 on watchOS 26 - even worse than watchOS 11, with complications disappearing and reappearing.
Swiping to switch the watch face was a core feature from the beginning of Apple Watch, and even though swiping between watch faces is a transitionary software feature that doesn’t need to be reinvented, it does need to be fixed. Liquid Glass is proof that Apple does care about these small details - they literally reinvented every transition with Liquid Glass.
Apple Watch had a great run under their now-retired COO Jeff Williams, but I think he had too much on his plate, putting these optimizations on the back burner.
In addition to serving as Apple’s COO, Williams had also been overseeing the company’s customer service and support, the design team, software and hardware engineering for the Apple Watch, and Apple’s overall health initiatives.
Recently, Bloomberg reported that some of Williams’ responsibilities would be split, with the health and fitness teams reporting to Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services Eddy Cue, watchOS shifting to Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi, and Apple Watch hardware engineering being handed to Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering John Ternus.
The tag-team combo of Federighi and Ternus leading software and hardware engineering for Apple Watch is a great sign, and I’m confident we’ll get a more optimized watchOS experience that runs as fluid as the Liquid Glass moniker it carries.