I can see that there’s a photo gallery icon on my new Apple Watch Sport Edition, but how do I actually get photos to show up?
First off, let’s be clear, even with the 42mm Apple Watch, that’s a pretty small screen to be sharing photos with your friends and colleagues. You already know that, it’s one of the areas where the big screen of your iPhone — heck, even your iPhone 4s — is a win over the Watch.
But yeah, I have mine set up to show photos on the postage stamp-size screen, so I too am happy to deal with the limitations in return for the convenience. A fair trade-off, actually.
The trick to getting it to work is to have photos organized into albums on your iPhone in the first place and to then assign one of those albums as the one to sync with the Watch.
First, let’s jump onto the Apple Watch Sport [Edition] and find the Photos gallery icon:
It’s the pretty flower where each petal is a different color. At least, I think that’s what it’s supposed to be!
Tap on it and it’ll tell you that it’s not configured:
Okay, so let’s switch to the iPhone and launch the Apple Watch app.
You might have to scroll down just a bit to find what we seek:
You can just look for the matching icon if you want, but it’s Photos that you want.
Tap on the Photos entry…
By default mine is sharing the “Favorites” album, but for me, that album is actually empty. Heck, I don’t even know how to mark a photo on my phone as a favorite!
Instead, I’m going to switch to a different album. But before I do, notice the Photos Limit line. That’s important as you don’t want to end up with your Watch filled up by photos. Then again, notice the small print: I have 5.8GB of space on my Apple Watch Sport so 15MB is a drop in the proverbial bucket.
To switch albums I tap on Synced Album and see a list of albums with photo count in each:
To make this interesting, I’ve chosen my Instagram album, one that’s small — 18 photos — and automatically has a copy of every photo I post to Instagram [Follow me on Instagram]
That’s it. Done.
Now back on the Apple Watch, tapping on “Photos” is considerably more interesting:
Tap on a single image and it takes up the entire Watch screen:
This looks big, but remember, it’s on my wrist:
Still, pretty cool nonetheless. And now you know!