Smart Stack on Apple Watch needs this cool upgrade for older watch faces.

If you notice all of Apple’s newer watch faces, they have a mini version of said watch face in Smart Stack. It’s a nice little touch that Apple cares about, but not enough to back port it to older watch faces.

At least, not yet.

We had a similar issue when the Series 10 was released, with only 3 watch faces having the Always On Display with ticking seconds hand. I won’t give Apple too much grief over this Smart Stack request because they didn’t announce it as a feature of the watch. They didn’t get on stage and say:

“We’ve updated Smart Stack to have a more lively watch face in the corner, giving you a more intimate look at the time representing your current watch face.”

Every new watch face since the debut of the Series 10 has this new feature. Take a look at Flux for example:

The smaller time in Smart Stack looks and behaves just like the real version with the solid line filling up the screen.

Here are more examples of newer watch faces having this feature:

Apple started keeping the “soul” of the watch face in Smart Stack.

The detail is pretty impressive, especially for Exactograph and Waypoint. In Waypoint, the compass is actually functional in Smart Stack which is overkill, but cool. We need some of this love for older watch faces. I say “some” because it doesn’t make sense for certain watch faces, and the generic analog and digital watch faces are fine.

Here are some analog watch faces that could be spruced up:

BEFORE: Notice how the Utility watch face is used as the generic Smart Stack watch face for most analog faces.

AFTER: Smart Stack keeps the watch face identity intact.

There’s also a ton of digital watch faces that could use this new feature: For example, having the digital time with a small typeface doesn’t make sense on the X-Large face, which is all about accessibility. In Artist, sure the color is matched in Smart Stack, but the face can be shrunken down to fit with similar sized font as the current digital clock.

Before - not enough distinction with just a few color variations.

After - Each watch face keeps its identity and makes Smart Stack a fun place to hang out.

Will we see an updated Smart Stack in watchOS 27? Maybe, but let’s hope we also get smoother swipes between watch faces.