Technologies

Enhance Your Apple Watch Experience With These 8 Expert-Approved Tips

From taking control of Smart Stack to pausing your exercise rings, these tips will let you get the most out of your Apple Watch.

Apple’s smartwatch lineup continues to improve. With an updated design, an OS that continues to evolve and features that aim to make users more productive, there is plenty here to love. With the new Apple Watch series 11, Apple Watch SE 3 and the Apple Watch Ultra 3, you have multiple models to choose from, and all of them feature the new features in WatchOS 26.

With a variety of features that aim to make you more productive and stay active, it can be tricky to know which features are worth checking out. These are the eight features that I recommend to everyone.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Swipe between watch faces (again)

Until WatchOS 10.0, you could swipe from the left or right edge of the screen to switch active watch faces, a great way to quickly go from an elegant workday face to an exercise-focused one, for example. Apple removed that feature, likely because people were accidentally switching faces by brushing the edges of the screen.

However, the regular method involves more steps (touch and hold the face, swipe to change, tap to confirm), and people realized that the occasional surprise watch face change wasn’t really so bad. Therefore, as of version 10.2, including the current WatchOS 26, you can turn the feature on by toggling a setting: Go to Settings > Clock and turn on Swipe to Switch Watch Face.

Stay on top of your heart health with Vitals

Wearing your Apple Watch while sleeping offers a trove of information — and not just about how you slept last night. If you don the timepiece overnight, it tracks a number of health metrics. The Vitals app gathers that data and reports on the previous night’s heart rate, respiration, body temperature (on supported models) and sleep duration. The Vitals app can also show data collected during the previous seven days — tap the small calendar icon in the top-left corner.

If you own a watch model sold before Jan. 29, 2024, you’ll also see a blood oxygen reading. On newer watches in the US, that feature works differently because of an intellectual property fight: The watch’s sensors take a reading, and then send the data to the Health app on your iPhone. You can check it there, but it doesn’t show up in the Vitals app.

How is this helpful? The software builds a baseline of what’s normal for you. When the values stray outside normal ranges, such as irregular heart or respiratory rates, the Vitals app reports them as atypical to alert you. It’s not a medical diagnosis, but it can prompt you to get checked out and catch any troubles early.

Make the Wrist Flick gesture second nature

WatchOS 26 adds a new gesture that has quickly become a favorite. On the Apple Watch Series 9 and later, and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Ultra 3, Wrist Flick is a quick motion to dismiss incoming calls, notifications or really anything that pops up on the screen. Wrist Flick joins Double Tap as a way to interact with a watch even if you’re not in a position to tap the screen.

But what I like most about the gesture is that it’s also a shortcut for jumping back to the watch face. For example, when a Live Activity is automatically showing up in the Smart Stack, a quick flick of the wrist hides the stack. Or let’s say you’re configuring a feature in the Settings app that’s buried a few levels deep. You don’t need to repeatedly tap the back (<) button — just flick your wrist.

Make the Smart Stack work for you

The Smart Stack is a place to access quick information that might not fit into what Apple calls a «complication» (the things on the watch face other than the time itself, such as your Activity rings or the current outside temperature). When viewing the clock face, turn the digital crown clockwise or swipe from the bottom of the screen to view a series of tiles that show information such as the weather or suggested photo memories. This turns out to be a great spot for accessing features when you’re using a minimal watch face that has no complications.

Choose which Live Activities appear automatically

The Smart Stack is also where Live Activities appear: If you order a food delivery, for example, the status of the order appears as a tile in the Smart Stack (and on the iPhone lock screen). And because it’s a timely activity, the Smart Stack becomes the main view instead of the watch face.

Some people find that too intrusive. To disable it, on your watch open the Settings app, go to Smart Stack > Live Activities and turn off the Auto-Launch Live Activities option. You can also turn off Allow Live Activities in the same screen if you don’t want them disrupting your watch experience.

Apple’s apps that use Live Activities are listed there if you want to configure the setting per app, such as making active timers appear but not media apps such as Music. For third-party apps, open the Watch app on your iPhone, tap Smart Stack and find the settings there.

Add and pin favorite widgets in the Smart Stack

When the Smart Stack first appeared, its usefulness seemed hit or miss. Since then, Apple seems to have improved the algorithms that determine which widgets appear — instead of it being an annoyance, I find it does a good job of showing me information in context. But you can also pin widgets that will show up every time you open the stack.

For example, I use 10-minute timers for a range of things. Instead of opening the Timers app (via the App list or a complication), I added a single 10-minute timer to the Smart Stack. Here’s how:

View the Smart Stack by turning the Digital Crown or swiping from the bottom of the screen.
Tap the Edit button at the bottom of the stack. (In WatchOS 11, touch and hold the screen to enter the edit mode.)
Tap the + button and scroll to the app you want to include (Timers, in this example).
Tap a tile to add it to the stack; for Timers, there’s a Set Timer 10 minutes option.
If you want it to appear higher or lower in the stack order, drag it up or down.
Tap the checkmark button to accept the change.

The widget appears in the stack but it may get pushed down in favor of other widgets the watch thinks should have priority. In that case, you can pin it to the top of the list: While editing, tap the yellow Pin button. That moves it up but Live Activities can still take precedence.

Use the watch as a flashlight

You’ve probably used the flashlight feature of your phone dozens of times but did you know the Apple Watch can also be a flashlight? Instead of a dedicated LED (which phones also use as a camera flash), the watch’s full screen becomes the light emitter. It’s not as bright as the iPhone’s, nor can you adjust the beam width, but it’s perfectly adequate for moving around in the dark when you don’t want to disturb someone sleeping.

To activate the flashlight, press the side button to view Control Center and then tap the Flashlight button. That makes the entire screen white — turn the Digital Crown to adjust the brightness. It even starts dimmed for a couple of seconds to give you a chance to direct the light away so it doesn’t fry your eyes.

The flashlight also has two other modes: Swipe left to make the white screen flash on a regular cadence or swipe again to make the screen bright red. The flashing version can be especially helpful when you’re walking or running at night to make yourself more visible to vehicles.

Press the Digital Crown to turn off the Flashlight and return to the clock face.

Pause your Exercise rings if you’re traveling or ill

Closing your exercise, movement and standing rings can be great motivation for being more active. Sometimes, though, your body has other plans. Until WatchOS 11, if you became ill or needed to be on a long-haul trip, any streak of closing those rings that you built up would be dashed.

Now, the watch is more forgiving (and practical), letting you pause your rings without disrupting the streak. Open the Activity app and tap the Weekly Summary button in the top-left corner. Scroll all the way to the bottom (take a moment to admire your progress) and tap the Pause Rings button. Or, if you don’t need that extra validation, tap the middle of the rings and then tap Pause Rings. You can choose to pause them for today, until next week or month, or set a custom number of days.

When you’re ready to get back into your activities, go to the same location and tap Resume Rings.

Bypass the countdown to start a workout

Many workouts start with a three-second countdown to prep you to be ready to go. That’s fine and all, but usually when I’m doing an Outdoor Walk workout, for example, my feet are already on the move.

Instead of losing those steps, tap the countdown once to bypass it and get right to the calorie burn.

How to force-quit an app (and why you’d want to)

Don’t forget, the Apple Watch is a small computer on your wrist and every computer will have glitches. Every once in a while, for instance, an app may freeze or behave erratically.

On a Mac or iPhone, it’s easy to force a recalcitrant app to quit and restart, but it’s not as apparent on the Apple Watch. Here’s how:

Double-press the Digital Crown to bring up the list of recent apps.
Scroll to the one you want to quit by turning the crown or dragging with your finger.
Swipe left on the app until you see a large red X button.
Tap the X button to force-quit the app.

Keep in mind this is only for times when an app has actually crashed — as on the iPhone, there’s no benefit to manually quitting apps.

These are some of my favorite Apple Watch tips, but there’s a lot more to the popular smartwatch. Be sure to also check out why the Apple Watch SE 3 could be the sleeper hit of this year’s lineup and Vanessa Hand Orellana’s visit to the labs where Apple tests how the watches communicate.

Technologies

Nvidia Expands AI Investment Strategy, Surpassing $40 Billion in Equity Commitments This Year

Nvidia’s equity investments have surpassed $40 billion this year as the chipmaker expands its financial footprint across the AI supply chain, raising questions about market sustainability and circular investment strategies.

Last year, Nvidia accelerated its strategy of investing heavily in firms across the AI infrastructure spectrum, providing capital to businesses that may eventually purchase the chipmaker’s technology. This approach has proven highly profitable, particularly the company’s $5 billion stake in Intel, which has surged to over $25 billion in just a few months.

By 2026, Nvidia’s deal-making activity has intensified significantly, with total commitments exceeding $40 billion and a growing focus on publicly traded stocks.

Earlier this week, Nvidia announced a $2.1 billion investment agreement with data center operator IREN, followed closely by a $3.2 billion pact with Corning, a century-old glass manufacturer. Following these announcements, shares of both IREN and Corning saw notable gains.

Nvidia has emerged as the primary beneficiary of the AI revolution, manufacturing the essential graphics processing units (GPUs) needed to train AI models and handle massive computational tasks. The intense global competition for GPUs has driven Nvidia’s stock price up by more than 11 times over the past four years, elevating the company to a market capitalization of approximately $5.2 trillion and making it the world’s most valuable enterprise.

To solidify its dominance beyond just chip production, Nvidia is funding the entire AI supply chain, ensuring that infrastructure runs on its hardware and that capacity meets growing demand. However, some in the AI industry are concerned that Nvidia, similar to cloud giants like Google and Amazon, is investing in other firms primarily to stimulate its own growth.

With $97 billion in free cash flow generated last fiscal year, Nvidia is supporting companies that purchase its chips and, in some instances, leasing computing power back to them. Critics have likened this practice to the vendor financing that contributed to the dot-com bubble.

Matthew Bryson, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, noted that Nvidia’s investments align with the «circular investment theme» that has raised concerns about market sustainability. Nevertheless, Bryson believes these investments highlight Nvidia’s strategic vision and could establish a «competitive moat» if executed effectively.

An Nvidia spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

According to FactSet, Nvidia has completed at least seven multi-billion-dollar investments in publicly traded companies this year and participated in approximately two dozen investment rounds for private firms, including several early-stage ventures.

‘We don’t pick winners’

Nvidia’s largest single investment is a $30 billion stake in OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and a long-time partner. The company also contributed to major funding rounds for Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI, shortly before xAI merged with SpaceX in February.

«There are so many great, amazing foundation model companies, and we try to invest in all of them,» Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated during an April podcast. «We don’t pick winners. We need to support everyone.»

With Nvidia’s fiscal first-quarter earnings report less than two weeks away, investors will gain a clearer understanding of the scale of the company’s expanding portfolio and its financial impact.

During the previous fiscal year, Nvidia invested $17.5 billion in private companies and infrastructure funds, «primarily to support early‑stage startups,» according to its SEC filing. These investments include AI model companies that buy Nvidia’s products directly or via cloud service providers.

Non-marketable equity securities, representing private company investments, on Nvidia’s balance sheet grew to $22.25 billion by the end of January, up from $3.39 billion a year prior. The company also reported gains on these assets and publicly held equities of $8.92 billion, up from $1.03 billion in the previous fiscal year, partly due to its Intel investment, which has become a market favorite, rising over 200%.

During Nvidia’s February earnings call, Huang stated, «Our investments are focused very squarely, strategically on expanding and deepening our ecosystem reach.»

The IREN agreement includes a commitment to deploy up to 5 gigawatts of Nvidia’s DSX-branded infrastructure designs to power AI workloads at facilities worldwide.

Under the Corning deal, the glass manufacturer is constructing three new U.S. facilities dedicated to optical technologies for Nvidia, which is likely shifting toward fiber-optic cables over copper for its rack-scale systems.

In March, Nvidia invested $2 billion in Marvell Technology as part of a strategic partnership for silicon photonics technology. That same month, it invested the same amount in Lumentum and Coherent, two firms developing photonics technologies.

Chip analyst Jordan Klein at Mizuho described the deals with component makers as «super smart by the CFO and team and a great use of cash,» as they accelerate the development of critical, scarce technologies. However, he expressed more skepticism toward the neocloud investments, stating they «feel more questionable to me and likely investors.»

«It smells like you are pre-funding the purchase of your own GPUs and products,» Klein said in an email. Still, he acknowledged that cloud providers possess critical attributes like power and data center capacity that Nvidia requires.

Ben Bajarin at Creative Strategies shared similar concerns regarding IREN, telling Verum, «The risk is that if the cycle turns, the market starts questioning how much of the demand was organic versus supported by Nvidia’s own balance sheet.»

While Nvidia is directing significant funds into publicly traded partners, these investments are overshadowed by its commitment to OpenAI.

Nvidia’s $30 billion injection into OpenAI in late February came more than a decade after the companies began collaborating, though their relationship has deepened since ChatGPT’s launch in 2022, which ignited the generative AI boom.

Nvidia’s initial investment in OpenAI was intended to be much larger. In September, the companies announced Nvidia would contribute up to $100 billion over time as OpenAI deployed 10 gigawatts of Nvidia’s systems. That deal ultimately did not materialize as OpenAI shifted away from developing data centers, instead relying on partners like Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon to assemble capacity.

Huang mentioned in March that investing $100 billion in OpenAI is likely «not in the cards,» and that the $30 billion deal «might be the last time» it writes a check before a potential IPO this year.

WATCH: Nvidia’s AI supply chain empire: Here’s what you need to know

Technologies

Why Privacy Begins Where Even the Service Creator Can’t See Anything

Today, almost every messenger promises “security” and “encryption.” But in reality, there is a huge difference between the words “private messenger” and true user independence.

Most modern platforms are still built around trust in the company. The user is expected to believe that:

* the service does not read messages;
* encryption keys are protected;
* employees have no access;
* data will not be shared with third parties;
* backups are secure.

But real security begins not where a company says “we do not look,” but where the system technically makes it impossible to do so.

This is exactly the principle behind Verum Messenger.

The Core Principle of Verum: Only the User Has Access

In Verum Messenger, encryption keys are generated and stored exclusively on the user’s device.

This means:

* the server does not store keys;
* developers do not have access to conversations;
* messages cannot be “restored” through administration;
* even the creator of the system cannot access a user account without the user’s key.

The key belongs only to the owner.

The user can:

* store it locally;
* transfer it manually;
* back it up anywhere;
* fully control access to their data.

The system is not built around trust in a company. It is built around eliminating the need to trust anyone at all.

Why the Absence of Access Matters More Than Promises

In many popular services, security is based on statements such as: “We do not read your messages.”

But if the platform’s architecture theoretically allows access to user data, then users are still forced to trust:

* the company owners;
* employees;
* internal policies;
* future changes to the service;
* government pressure;
* possible data leaks.

Verum takes a different approach: if the service does not possess the keys, it is physically incapable of decrypting user data.

That is the fundamental difference between:

* “we will not look”
and
* “we are unable to look.”

Why Phone Numbers Are a Weak Point

Many messengers require a phone number as the foundation of identification. But a phone number is not just a registration method.

It:

* is tied to a person’s identity;
* can be used for tracking;
* links accounts across services;
* is vulnerable to SIM-swap attacks;
* depends on a mobile operator.

Verum removes this dependency.

Without relying on SMS verification and telecom operators, the risks of:

* deanonymization;
* account hijacking;
* third-party account recovery

are significantly reduced.

Open Source and Audits: Why the Debate Continues

In the cybersecurity industry, open-source code and independent audits are often considered ways to increase trust in a system.

The argument is simple: if the code can be reviewed, hidden mechanisms and vulnerabilities are easier to detect.

But there is another perspective.

Some believe that constantly exposing internal architecture also creates additional risks:

* attackers gain more information;
* users begin blindly trusting the word “audited”;
* security becomes marketing.

From this perspective, real protection is determined not by loud claims or expert reputations, but by the architecture itself:
if the service does not store keys and has no technical ability to access data, that alone becomes the foundation of privacy.

Privacy Is Not a Promise — It Is a System Limitation

The central idea behind Verum Messenger is simple:

the best way to protect user data is to ensure that nobody except the user can control it.

Even the platform owner.

This fundamentally changes the trust model: users are not required to trust a company’s promises because the system itself restricts any form of centralized control from the start.

In this approach, privacy stops being a feature.

It becomes an architectural principle.

Technologies

Rocket Lab Soars 34% on Record Revenue and Historic Launch Agreement

Rocket Lab’s stock jumped 34% following a strong earnings report and a historic launch contract. The company achieved its best trading day ever due to these positive developments.

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