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watchOS 26 adds four brand new watch faces, including an Ultra exclusive

Today Apple unveiled brand new Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 models, showing off some new watch faces in the process. But as revealed in the watchOS 26 RC notes, these faces are coming to older models too. Here are the four new watch faces in watchOS 26.

New watch faces are coming in watchOS 26, here are the details

When watchOS 26 was unveiled back in June, Apple didn’t announce any brand new watch faces.

Instead, the only news on the face front included changes to the Photos face and expanded support for 1-second always-on updates.

But today the company shipped the watchOS 26 RC, and it includes a few surprises.

There are four brand new watch faces coming in watchOS 26, per the release notes:

  • Exactograph is a modern re-imagination of a traditional regulator watch which separates out hours, minutes and seconds for more precise time keeping
  • Flow uses Liquid Glass numerals that refract a fluid orb of color that responds to your wrist movements
  • Waypoint acts as a live compass that will show where you are in relation to places you’ve saved in Maps or points of interest (Available on Apple Watch Ultra)
  • Hermès Faubourg Party features animated shorts that appear based on the time of day or movements with a series of characters (Available on Apple Watch Hermès)

As you can see, two of the new faces are exclusive to certain hardware.

Waypoint is limited to Apple Watch Ultra models, joining the two existing exclusive faces: Wayfinder and Modular Ultra.

Hermès Faubourg Party, as you might expect, is a new exclusive for Hermès models.

All users who install watchOS 26 will gain access to the new Exactograph and Flow faces, however. The update will launch to all users on Monday, September 15.

What do you think of watchOS 26’s new watch faces? Let us know in the comments.

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Avatar for Ryan Christoffel Ryan Christoffel

Ryan got his start in journalism as an Editor at MacStories, where he worked for four years covering Apple news, writing app reviews, and more. For two years he co-hosted the Adapt podcast on Relay FM, which focused entirely on the iPad. As a result, it should come as no surprise that his favorite Apple device is the iPad Pro.