Tips and Tricks for the Galaxy Watch Ultra video [CNET]

These tips work with the Galaxy Watch Ultra and Galaxy Watch 7, plus some older Galaxy Watches when they get the update to WearOS 5.

You’ve got a brand new Galaxy Watch ultra and wanna get the most out of it. You’ve come to the right place as I’ve put together some tips secret and not so secret features to check out some of these tips will also work with the Galaxy Watch seven and even older Galaxy watches. Once they get the update to wear os five, this nifty double pinch action lets you control your watch without using the other hand, go to settings, buttons and gestures and turn on double pinch as it’s not on by default. Here’s a quick list of what you can do with double pinch. Take a photo on your phone when you use the watches camera, remote app, answer and hang up a phone call, play and pause in the stock music app, start and stop the stopwatch and dismiss an alarm or a timer. You’ll see this icon in places you can use double pinch. Once you’ve turned it on the Galaxy Watch ultra’s quick button can be truly helpful. Here’s how to get the most out of it. Go to settings buttons and gestures, quick button and here you can set what it launches when you press it just once that could be Samsung Health. So it launches the workout page or you can go in to automatically launch any of your favorite workout types like walking or running with just one press or the quick button could say activate the stopwatch flash flight or the waterlock during a workout. A short press of the quick button starts the exercise. It can then skip the countdown when you press it again. And then if you press it once more, it will pause and then resume your workout. A double press of the quick button will record a lap when you’re running or cycling or start the next session. If you’re doing intervals and weights and a long press of the quick button will finish your workout or if you’re in multi sport mode, it will start the next exercise. These side buttons can be programmed to do different things. Go to settings, buttons and gestures and scroll down to home button, which is this one right here, double press the home button and then you can go to the recent apps. You can bring up accessibility, shortcuts, bring up exercise, shortcuts or even launch your favorite app. This is how I really love to bring up Spotify using this method. You can also change what happens when you press and hold this button. So instead of Bixby, you could swap it out for the power off menu, which is what I like or you could also just change it to activate the Google Assistant. And for the back button, this one down here it can go to the previous screen or show your recent apps. The Galaxy Watch ultra and Watch seven have sleep apnea detection. And it’s coming soon to other earlier Galaxy watches with a software update. Turn it on by going to the Samsung health monitor app on your phone and it will walk you through the setup process, know that it turns itself off automatically after two nights after showing if you do or don’t have signs of sleep apnea. So it’s not supposed to be a constant monitoring tool that’s on all the time. Here’s how to turbocharge the battery life on your galaxy watch by turning off certain features you might not need first stress monitoring, settings, health stress and change that to manual. Then heart rate monitoring. Maybe if you don’t need that running continuously, you can change the setting to run every 10 minutes while you’re sitting still or select it for manual readings only. You can also turn off the always on display. So to do that swipe down from your clock face and tap the always on icon to deselect it, there’s also power saving mode that turns off the always on display plus the wake up gesture and Wi Fi it also decreases screen brightness and the screen time out. And during a workout, you might consider using exercise power saving mode that’s on the settings screen of your workout tile, just scroll all the way down to exercise, power saving. You can also use your watch just as a watch in the battery menu. Scroll down to watch only and this will only show you the time. Nothing else. You can listen to music and audio on the Galaxy Watch speaker, which is really cool. Open the music app, press play and it should automatically start playing on your watch speaker. As long as you don’t have Bluetooth headphones connected or Spotify. Open the app, find your track, hit play and it should ask you then to select a device, choose this watch and you’re jamming out. This also works for youtube which is super cool night mode, changes the brightness and adds a red filter over your watch face to make it easier to see at night. It works on the ultra analog and simple ultra watch faces on the Galaxy watch ultra and you can long press to bring up the watch face switch, then set customize and set this option to come on automatically have it on all the time or turn it off altogether. You can use the temperature sensor on the ultra and the watch seven to measure the temperature of stuff around you. This is actually in the play store. Search for an app called Thermo Check and then download it. Now take your arm cup of coffee table, whatever, hold the watch a certain distance away. And take its temperature if you, you have multiple apps running and then you go back to the watch face, you can see and quickly switch back into any of them by pressing on the icon at the bottom of the screen. Like here you can see, I’ve got a workout going, I’ve got Spotify Open and I also have a stopwatch. I can tap each of these to switch back into them really quickly. Always leaving your watch behind at the gym. Turn on notify when left behind. So you’ll get a notification on your phone. Open up the Samsung Find app, then tap your watch, then toggle on notify. When left behind. You can also do the reverse. So get notified if you leave your phone behind while you’re wearing the watch that’s in settings, advanced features and then choose disconnection alerts. You can make it really stand out and get your attention by selecting this option that says full screen alert with sound and vibration. Your watch can make the ticking sound like a traditional watch. Go to settings, sounds and vibrations and then system sounds and choose ticking. If your watch face supports it, make sure it’s really quiet around you and put the watch to your ear. That’s pretty cool. Something I hope you’ll never need to use is emergency S OS, but it is important to set it up properly just in case go to settings safety and emergency. And the first thing you’ll probably wanna do here is turn on hard fall detection. So if you take a tumble and don’t respond to the countdown, it will automatically play a sound and call for help. You can scroll further down and make sure that this only activates during a workout or you can keep this on all the time. Now to get the watch to text your location and an S OS message to your emergency contacts first, go back into that general safety and emergency panel, then choose emergency contacts and make sure you add them on your phone. Now go back to the watch. You can choose this share info with emergency contacts toggle and make sure that is turned on the default Samsung keyboard isn’t the best when it comes to voice to text dictation. At least it’s not great with my accent. So I like to use G board instead. Download it from the play store, then set it as your default keyboard by going to settings general input and then keyboard list and default. Make sure to select G board here. Now when you bring up the keyboard, it will use Google’s speech engine, which I found is a lot more accurate. And another Google tip, your watch can give you the same turn by turn directions from your phone. In Google Maps on your wrist, open the Maps app on the watch, then scroll down to settings, find mirroring and then select any or all of these options from driving, walking, cycling and transit. Now there’s no reverse wireless charging of the seven and ultra from the back of Samsung phones anymore because of that redesigned bio active sensor. But you can still charge your watch from a phone as long as you have your USB C charger, just plug it in like this. And if you’re wondering if you can use all the Galaxy Watch chargers with the ultra and seven, I’ve got one here from the Galaxy Watch six. It definitely works. There’s so many cool things you can do on these watches and this video just scratches the surface. So if you want more tips, drop me a comment below. And if you already knew all these, you get a gold star and may your watch be blessed with extra battery life? See ya.