If you have an Apple Watch, the Dock can be a handy place to access your apps. Here’s how you can us
You can access the apps on your Apple Watch from the home screen, but that can be difficult given the cluttered interface and the lack of names for each icon. Instead, you may want to tap into the Dock to open your favorite programs.
Through the Dock you can see the name of each app and even get a preview of the current content. You can then access or remove any app directly from the Dock. And by turning to your iPhone, you can determine which apps appear on the Dock and how they’re ordered. Let’s check out how to use and customize the Dock on your Apple Watch.
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com .
The Dock is accessible on any Apple Watch, from the Series 1 through the Series 3. To access the Dock, tap on the side button. By default, a list of recently used apps appears. You can cycle through the list a couple of ways. Swipe your finger up or down to move up or down in the list, or turn the Digital Crown. When you get to the end of the list, you can tap on the All Apps link to jump to the Home screen and view all your app icons. If you swipe to the top of the list, the first app displays a link to “Keep in Dock.” Tap that link if you want to make sure that app always remains in the Dock. To open an app from the Dock, just tap on it.
Tap on the side button to return to the Dock. You can remove apps from the Dock directly from your Watch. To do this, swipe the app to the left. Then tap on the Remove command. The app is removed from the Dock.
If you want to view your favorite apps instead of recently used ones, you can customize which apps appear in the Dock. For that task, segue to your trusty iPhone. Open the Watch app on your phone, scroll down, and tap on the entry for Dock. Under Dock Ordering, tap on the selection for Favorites.
You can now select the apps you don’t want to appear in the Dock, the apps you do want to appear, and the order in which you want them to appear. You can pick up to 10 apps to appear in the Dock as favorites. Even then, your most recently used app still appears at the top of the list. Tap on the Edit link. In the Favorites group, tap the minus sign for any app you don’t want to see in the Dock and tap on the Remove button. Do this for any other apps you want to jettison from the Dock.
Next, move to the Do Not Include section. Tap on the plus sign for any app you wish to see in the Dock. If you try including more than 10, the Watch app tells you that you’ve reached your limit. Now, move back to the section for Favorites. Using the hamburger () icon next to each app, you can rejigger the order of all the apps. Hold down the icon and move an app up or down in the list until all the apps are sorted the way you want. When you’re finished, tap Done.
Return to your Watch. Tap the side button. Scroll through your apps and you’ll see your favorites listed in the order in which you placed them.
