14 DAY TRIAL // While the Apple Watch Ultra itself is a major upgrade over the standard Apple Watch, whose design has remained largely unchanged throughout the years, one of the things that I love the most about this new model is the Action button.
As weird as this may sound, having a second button is an incredible addition for me, especially as Apple allows users to configure what this button can do in the first place.
Coming from Garmin where physical buttons are playing an important part in the entire experience, this new button certainly comes in handy, especially when trying to start a workout faster. In other words, if you want to start tracking a new workout, you no longer have to press the Digital Crown and then navigate to workouts on the Apple Watch. Simply pressing the Action button directly gets you to this menu, obviously if you configure it this way.
However, the Action button can do a lot more, and today, I’m going to highlight three things that many people actually don’t know about this great feature.
The Siren
One of the new features of the Apple Watch Ultra is the Siren, which itself is a great tool that can be used in a wide variety of scenarios, including when having an emergency.
The Siren can be easily activated from the dedicated app on the watch, but also using the Action button. By default, pressing and holding the Action button activates the Siren.
However, if you don’t want to use this setting – because, let’s be honest about it, accidentally activating the Siren is quite easy, especially when playing with your kid, for instance, all you have to do is to go to Settings > Action Button and turn the feature called Hold to Turn On under the Siren section to off.
The Action button is always prioritized
If you happen to press the Action button and the Digital Crown at the same time, the Action button is always prioritized. In other words, the Apple Watch Ultra will perform whatever action is assigned to the Action button even if you press the Digital Crown.
Apple explains the following:
“Be sure to avoid pressing the side button or the Digital Crown accidentally when you press the Action button. Your Apple Watch will do whatever is assigned to the Action button if you happen to press another button at the same time, unless a button combination is configured.”
The real magic
Officially, the Action button can do the following things on an Apple Watch: starting a workout, launching the stopwatch and the waypoint, backtracking, starting the diving app, opening the flashlight, and running a shortcut.
The shortcut part is the one that comes in handier than many people are tempted to believe. This is because, with the help of shortcuts, you can do so many other great things, so with the press of a button, you can easily run a much more advanced action right from the Apple Watch.
For instance, I’m using the Apple Watch Ultra Action button to control the garage door whenever I leave or get back home. In other words, I can easily open and close the garage door from the Apple Watch, all by simply running the configured shortcut using the Action button.
It goes without saying this is something that perfectly highlights the smart capabilities of the Apple Watch, and in many ways, it’s what sets the device apart from the rest of the crowd, including Garmin’s smartwatches that excel in terms of tracking but lag behind on this front.