How to customize Smart Stacks on watchOS 10

Found yourself waking up to a shiny new Watch interface? It’s probably because your Apple Watch has automatically updated to watchOS 10 overnight. One of those major changes is the introduction of the Smart Stack, which is a brand new widget hub, allowing you to display certain apps or information without having to go into the watch apps list.

It’s a pretty great little feature, but there’s a chance you may have opened it by accident. If you’re wondering how to access and customize your Smart Stack, here’s everything you should know.

How to use Smart Stacks on watchOS 10

Giving you the ability to look at your own custom widgets and swap between apps with a simple swipe, the Smart Stack function is well… smart. Here’s how to use it:

Turn on your display by lifting your wrist or by clicking the crown
Swipe up from the bottom of the display

Now, you’ll see a sequence of widgets that can be clicked to open up the associated app. From the start, you will be presented with a handful of your favorite apps, but you can customize the order and what appears quite easily.

As well as giving you access to this new widget tab, watchOS 10 swaps a few buttons around with the side button now opening up the Control Center. The Digital Crown has not changed.

How to customize the Smart Stack on watchOS 10

Customize widgets in Smart Stack on watchOS10

(Image credit: Future / Apple)

Go into the Smart Stack by swiping up from the bottom of the screen
Press down on any part of the screen
You can then add or remove any of the widgets by clicking the plus or minus buttons respectively

It’s important to note that you can only move widgets if you have pinned them to the top. While you can add apps to, or remove apps from, pre-existing widgets, you have to favorite them to change their position.

One more thing… great widgets that could go further

Despite finding the swap to watchOS 10 a little disorienting, it’s actually a great update to the watch that makes my Series 7 feel more efficient and snappy. The Smart Stack gets rid of any use for a suspended apps feature and is easy to get to grips with when muscle memory kicks in. However, it feels like it’s missing some support initially. While being able to access exercise apps in seconds helps when I want to spontaneously go for a walk or start exercising, it is missing one of my most used apps — Voice Memos.

Shortcuts give some rudimentary features but this lack of support means you have to hope that new apps you download can be added to the stack. As well as this, the ability to move pinned apps but not unpinned apps is a tiny inconvenience that may result in you not realizing you can move them in the first place. The Smart Stack is a good feature that will likely be great in the future.