A few weeks ago, an anonymous leaker said Apple was preparing a new Home Screen for Apple Watch owners with watchOS 10. Now, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, in his Power On newsletter, has corroborated the previous information by reporting watchOS 10 is indeed bringing a new Home Screen with a widget focus.
The journalist says, “Apple is trying something different” as the company plans to bring back widgets and make them “a central part” of watchOS 10. According to him, the new interface would look similar to the reminiscent Siri Watch Face introduced with watchOS 4 alongside iOS/iPadOS widget stack features.
That said, Apple Watch users could not only see the main Watch Face but being able to scroll through other widgets, something similar to the revamped watchOS 9 workout interface, which lets you discover important data by scrolling the Digital Crown.
Gurman says that part of the current tests includes pressing the Digital Crown to see widgets instead of the watchOS Home Screen with apps. He says: “The move is an admission that the iPhone-like app format doesn’t always make sense on a watch – a place where you want as much information as possible with the least amount of poking around.”
With that in mind, watchOS 10 will focus on giving quicker access to bits of information, although these revamps might not be mandatory with its first iteration, but optional. These software changes are important because Gurman believes the next generation of Apple Watches will be pretty similar to the 2022 lineup, as Apple already brought significant hardware changes.
Interestingly enough, designer Parker Ortolani also recently published a mockup of what a revamped watchOS 10 Home Screen could look like. Since WWDC 2023 is about a month from now, Ortolani might have given us the best look yet at the future watchOS 10 interface.
