Apple’s Siri watch face finally bites the dust

The old Siri face for Apple Watch has finally been removed, as of the launch of watchOS 11. It seems likely that the decision was made in order to push users towards the similar but newer Smart Stacks interface option (shown above), which Apple has improved in the software update.

Zac Hall of 9to5Mac made the discovery, and deserves extra credit for having predicted it would happen this time last year.

“As of watchOS 10,” Hall wrote at the time, “the Siri watch face is six versions old. It debuted with much potential and made steps toward realizing that potential before it stalled. Now there’s a new widget system on Apple Watch that turns the Siri watch face into an antique.”

The then-new widget system referred to is Smart Stack, a major interface tweak that debuted in watchOS 10 in 2023. Rather than being a watch face in its own right, the Smart Stack is a change of view that can be accessed from any face (other than the Siri one) by scrolling up on the Digital Crown. This brings up a vertically scrolling stack of widgets that the system thinks may be of interest.

Apple appears committed to Smart Stack, and the system got an upgrade in the newly announced watchOS 11 update, which is currently in beta. This enables it to feature Live Activities and become smarter about predicting what widgets you’ll want to see based on your routine and additional information such as the location and weather conditions.

The Siri watch face looks and behaves roughly the same as the Smart Stack, but obviously has the disadvantage of being a face rather than a feature accessed from a face; you can’t easily go back to a default face with other complications (particularly since Apple removed the simple swipe to switch between faces). It always seemed strange to have both Siri face and Smart Stack even though, as Hall noted last year, Apple doesn’t generally remove faces.

Well, now it has. And the (presumably small) group of people who currently use the Siri watch face can be consoled by the idea that by switching to a different face and then accessing Smart Stack from there, they will get all the same benefits, plus improved performance and easy access to other complications.

watchOS 11 will roll out to the Apple Watch Series 6 and later as a finished update in the fall. (Here’s how to update watchOS on your Apple Watch.) For now it’s available as a beta version for developers; a public beta is likely to appear some time in July.