Watchos 26: More Apple Watch faces with Series 10 upgrade display

The Apple Watch Series 10 features an upgraded display with a faster refresh rate. This allows the selected Watch Faces to display the ticking seconds indicator even in on mode. However, most watch faces don’t actually take advantage of new hardware yet. The Watchos 26 software update coming this fall will change that.

Series 10 Enhanced Face

On startup, three clock faces now support second updates in flux, reflection and activity digital constant display modes. Apple later introduced the 2025 version of the Pride and Unity Watch faces, expanding support for five faces.

The Watchos 26 doesn’t make support universal, but it brings functionality to many existing watch faces. In particular, both California and Utilities show a hand of seconds in constant on-on mode on the watchos 26. Both of these faces can display numbers around the analog watch face. The faces of the first five watches with support did not feature this traditional watch style.

Among the Apple Watch faces that display analog seconds, these faces are in the supported categories of Watchos 26 Beta 1.

Activity analog, Activity digital, California, Color, Contour, Count Up, Flux, GMT, Infograph, Meridian, Big City, Nike analog, Number Mono, Pride Harmony, Reflection, Stripe, Solar analog, Unified Rhythm, and Utility.

It covers most watch faces with standard analog seconds hands. Apart from that, the faces of these watches can display seconds, but always on mode and have no support.

Chronograph Pro, KaleIdoscope, Lunar, Mickey Mouse, Modular Compact, Palette, Pride Analog, Pride Celebration, Solar Dial, Snoopy, Unity Bloom, Unity Lights, World Time.

Most of the watch faces that were not cut do not display traditional seconds hands and instead have custom designs. Chronograph Pro, which displays analog seconds on subdials, is the only unfortunate omission for me. Modular Compact still has a great candidate, digital second indicator, and it also technically updates the solar dial and world time analog clock.

With the rest of the omissions, the Watchos 26 adds a traditional watch style face, and the Apple Watch Series 10 is much better at displaying the face of an analog watch.

View the Face Gallery

The Watchos 26 doesn’t include a new watch face yet, but it features Apple’s new Liquid Glass Design Language. Apple will likely retain the new watch face after it appears along with the new Apple Watch model later this year.

Instead, Apple organized Watch Face into categories that comprise the new Watch Face Gallery. The section includes:

• New watch face
• Health and fitness
• photograph
• clean
• Data Rich
• Pride Collection
• Dress Watch
• Tool Watch
• Bold
• Playfulness
• Unity Collection
• colorful
• astronomy
• World Script
• motion
• Nike Collection
• Digital time
• Analog time

Apple Watch Ultra and Hermes also have their own sections. The sections can be viewed on your Apple Watch when selecting a face or in the iPhone Watch app.