PSA: watchOS 26 will mark the removal of a few older Apple Watch faces

In the earliest years of watchOS, Apple would introduce some new watch faces when unveiling a major release of watchOS at WWDC, but nowadays, Apple would debut new watch faces alongside new Apple Watch models in the fall. Apple unveiled watchOS 26 yesterday, and we didn’t get any new watch faces as expected; however, several Reddit users who have installed the first developer beta have noticed that Apple has removed several Watch faces that existed for several years. The five watch faces that watchOS 26 removed are:

The first three watch faces listed above—Fire/Water, Liquid Metal, and Vapor—were introduced alongside Apple Watch Series 4, and they were designed to showcase how their visual effects react uniquely with the curved edges of the screen. Gradient is a watch face that was introduced in watchOS 6, and it also took full advantage of the curved edges of the screen. Toy Story is a watch face that debuted in watchOS 4, so it’s been so long time that it stayed on watchOS.

The decision to remove those watch faces remains unclear, though it could be that Apple is trying to streamline its Watch Faces & Widget Gallery by organizing the selection into clearer categories.

This isn’t the first time that Apple has removed watch faces in major releases of watchOS in the past. For example, the current watchOS 11 release removed the classic Chronograph watch face that was available on Apple Watch since day 1. watchOS 11 also removed the Siri face, Explorer, and Numerals watch faces too.

We expect Apple to unveil the next generation Apple Watch models this fall, so we may see new watch faces to make up for that.

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