It’s been a little over 100 days since I upgraded my Apple Watch to the Series 4. Like many Series 4 watch owners, I was pretty excited when Apple announced new faces with even more complications, but it didn’t take long for me to realize more complications didn’t make creating the perfect watch face any easier.

Even months later, a number of complications haven’t been updated to support the new watch faces, some of the complications don’t work the way I had hoped, and there’s also the issue of 8 complications being visually overwhelming.

That being said, I think I’ve finally landed on a watch face that works for me, and I actually am using the ever cluttered Infograph face with all 8 complications. Even better, I’ve gotten out of the business of different watch faces for different activities on a regular basis. Goodbye separate faces for workouts, work, and weekends. Switching faces is strictly reserved for special occasions when I want to have a nicer looking face.

The main function my watch serves is to provide me with an overview of how my day is going with a quick glance. For those of you who’ve been following my home screen posts, my watch essentially replicates the top row of apps on my home screen.

In the top left corner, I have the date (via Better Day). The top left is reserved for the calendar. I’d honestly prefer to have the calendar displayed on along the top dial, but Apple made an unfortunate decision to link the top center complication with what’s displayed on the dial and also lock the digital time complication to that same spot. Unless I suddenly start reading analog clocks as quickly as digital ones again, which is pretty unlikely, I’m stuck with giving up arguably the most prominent complication location to the digital time. In the bottom left I have the Activity complication, and on the bottom left is Dark Sky. Within the watch dial itself are the complications for Things, Workout, and Waterminder.

Now, this watch face isn’t pretty, although it is the prettiest combination I’ve come up with. It is, however, exactly what I need my watch to be – quick access to see and do the most important things in my day – what’s going on and what I need to be focusing on. Complications on the outside of the dial are for quick status checks. Complications on the inside are for action items.

The only thing I wish I could add is Streaks, and I’ve toyed with replacing Waterminder with it as I’m also tracking hydration within Streaks, but being able to both quickly see and track what I’m drinking from Waterminder’s interface on my wrist seems to be the key to making sure I actually use the app, and as you can see by the fact that I hadn’t tracked anything by almost 9:30, I need all the reminding I can get.

Photo by Plush Design Studio on Unsplash