I think it was @ericvancewalton who pointed me to Clockology. Apple unfortunately doesn’t allow third-party watch faces on the Apple Watch, likely because they don’t want poorly made faces that kill the battery — and then get blamed for it. Enter this app, which cheats by allowing you to use any face you want, as long as you are running their app.

Half of me is surprised Apple allows this workaround, but then again, Apple probably figures that if you download an app specifically to get more watch faces, you’ll understand what’s going on when your battery dies faster.

Anyway, I haven’t been able to find many faces in the app that I like enough to use. The vast majority are digital, and as I’ve talked about before, I prefer analogue. But I did find one that looked pretty spiffy from a share on Reddit; so I downloaded it, and installed it easily enough. Here we go:

I dig it. The Roman numerals give it a classy look while still being easy enough to read at a glance, unlike the ugly Roman-numeral face Apple includes with the Watch.

I do have a few nitpicks. I’d rather it use white lettering on a black background: not only to make the battery load a little lighter, but also because in a dark room, even on the lowest brightness setting, this thing lights up the room. Also, while I like the general layout, I’d prefer a different font with thinner strokes for the Roman numerals.

That said, I’m fairly happy with it. You can go in and edit faces with this app, but I haven’t dived down that rabbit hole yet. Maybe eventually, but for now I’m going to stick with this for a week or two and see how it goes.

Check out the app if you have an Apple Watch and want access to more faces.

❦

David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Bluesky.

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