Having owned an Apple Watch for many months now, I have really been enjoying the “standard” features, such as notifications, haptic alerts, and asking Siri to change tracks whilst out riding.
Having also struggled with some of the initial shortcomings of the first version of Watch OS, I had been eagerly awaiting Watch OS2, which I finally installed a week or so ago….
I haven’t really had a deep dive into all the cool new features that the new OS brings, but one that I particularly like is the new Photo Album Watch Face.
If you are anything like me, you probably have a few photos on your computer / smartphone…. In my case, at last count I think it was something like 31,716.. :o
So with all these photos, sooner or later you will get lucky and take a snap or two that’s not half bad. This does however also create a bit of a problem… The ABUNDANCE CURSE.
You finish up with Sooooo many photos that you never get to look at them… sure you can share your favourites and post them out to facebook… (in my case I have 3,034 photos on my timeline … ooops ) or Instagram (2,721) but even a narcissist like me doesn’t spend that much time looking through their own photo stream / feed.
But, how many times a day do you look at your watch!? In my case, MANY times (I’m always running late for something! ;-)) So having your favourite snaps appear on the watch face is very very cool….
In fact, with a few simple steps, you can set things up so that your watch will surpise and delight you on a regular basis.
The power of iCloud and the new iPhoto is in fact quite magical!
To get things on to my Watch face quickly / easily, I created a generic iCloud Photo Sharing Album called “for Apple Watch”
Then I went in to my Watch Settings on the iPhone and set the “Synced Album” to “For Apple Watch”… and I also changed the photo storage limit to 500 photos (did I mention, I have a LOT of photos!? ;-))
Then finally on the Apple Watch itself, I changed the watch face to “Photo Album”
And now the rest just happens as if by magic!
I can trawl through any of my albums on my mac or iphone or iPad, and anything that I come across that I reckon might be fun to see again, I just share it with the iCloud Album “for Apple Watch”… and hey presto, it’s now in the growing, random pool of pics I see each time I lift my wrist to look at the time! 
In fact, this is so cool, I am now experimenting with different “themes” that I can push to the watch… for example, family snaps,
travel snaps,
animal snaps and so on.
It’s amazing how effective this is at lifting your mood when you are stuck in some boring, random meeting and you go to check out the time, and you see a goofy photo of your crazy uncle!
Or when stuck in traffic trying to get back from the airport after an 18 hour day, and you see a snap from one of your mountain biking adventures in Austria..
Or when choking in haze and pollution in Asia, and your watch reminds you that there’s the splendour of the Aussie Outback, just waiting for you when you get back home!
Try it out for yourself some time… it still seems like magic that I can just drop something into an album on some random device, and next thing I know, it appears on my watch face! Very very cool new feature…. Now I cant wait til they add support for Video and for complications on this watch face!
Rock on Apple, nice work! :)
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