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When you combine Focus Modes on iOS 15 with the Shortcuts app, there are some truly incredible things that you can make happen.

For example in this #QuickTips video I’m going to teach you how you can automatically change your Watch Face when your Focus Modes go on and off.

Here’s how it works.

We’re going to do this entirely on the iPhone, but obviously you’re going to wear the Apple Watch at the same time so it’s connected.

So in the Watch App on the iPhone at the top there you can see my Watch Faces and when I go on there and scroll around I’ve currently got 18 different Watch Faces.

However, I want to start using some of these Watch Faces at home and at work.

As you can see on my Watch onscreen there at the moment I’ve got a lovely Portrait Watch Face featuring my cat Mr Tibbs.

But really when I go to work I want to use the Infograph watch face to have my Calendar appointments my To-Do list and more.

Also at the Gym it would be great to have my Activity Rings and the Workout app front-and-centre.

So what we’re going to do is we’re going to use the Shortcuts app to customise what our Watch does and when it does it.

Now as soon as we open the Shortcuts App, at the bottom, we have a tab bar.

We’re going to tap onto the Automation tab.

From here you may see I’ve already got a couple of different automations that are triggered when my Focus Mode changes – for example when I arrive home I can then have my Home Focus Wallpaper changing.

We’re going to create a new Automation for this first one, although you could add this step into your existing Automations and I’ll show you that in a second.

Okay let’s press the Plus button in the top corner and we’re going to create a new Personal Automation.

From here we’re going to scroll down the list of triggers until we get to our Focus Modes and I’m going to choose when Work Focus is turned on.

So tap onto Work Focus and then you can choose when turned on.

That means that our Watch Face will change when we arrive at Work and our Work Focus is activated.

Press Next in the top corner and now we get to the screen where we can start adding our actions.

But before we add the actions of the Shortcut, I just want to really quickly ask you that perhaps if you’re enjoying this video and you’re perhaps finding it interesting please do consider Subscribing down below.

That will really help me grow my Channel and share my videos with more people and it will help you get all of my latest iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch #QuickTips videos as and when they’re released each week.

Okay enough of that, let’s add the action!

The action we want is simply called Set Watch Face.

I’m going to search for the word “Watch” and, there you go, it’s popped up straight away.

When I tap on that it will add my action to my Shortcut, and then if I tap on the word ‘Face’ I can choose which of my Watch Faces I showed you earlier should be changed.

At this point I’m going to go for my Infograph Modular because that’s the one I’ve configured for Work, and when I’ve chosen that Watch Face I can then press Next in the top corner.

That’s right, there’s only one action in this Shortcut!

That’s all we need.

Now on this next screen we have a prompt to Ask Before Running.

We’re going to turn that off we want this to happen silently in the background without push notifications.

Then we’re going to press Done and on your list of Automations you should now have a brand new Automation for when the Work Focus is turned on.

Now the more eagle-eyed amongst you will notice I’ve already got a Shortcut for when work is turned on, so I’ve actually got two Shortcuts that will run at the same time.

Whilst you can do this it’s a little bit untidy and over time it could get a bit confusing, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to tap onto one of my existing Shortcuts for Personal and Gym and add the Watch Face action to that existing Shortcut – just like this.

The only complicating factor here is when we add that Set Watch Face action it’s going to try and inherit a variable from earlier on in the Shortcut.

In this case the Photos variable I used for my wallpaper.

Now I don’t want that as a Watch Face – in fact it isn’t a Watch Face.

So if I tap on the word Photos I can then press ‘Clear Variable’.

Now I’ve got my Shortcut action back again and I can tap on Face and choose the Watch Face I want for the Gym.

I can press the Back button in the top left corner to update my action, and then press Done.

And that’s my new automation updated.

Finally I’ll go on to my Personal Focus and I want to make sure my lovely picture of Mr Tibbs comes back whenever I’m on my Personal Focus mode.

Again, we’re going to press Add Action and we’re going to choose Set Watch Face.

From here though you’re going to take off that variable of Photos by tapping on it and pressing Clear Variable.

Then you can tap on Face and choose the Watch Face you want.

Lastly we’ll press the Back button in the top corner and then press Done to update that Automation.

And now on my Automation Screen I’ve got the four that I’ve set up – two for Work, one for Gym and one for Personal.

All of which will now change my Watch Faces.

So time to jump into Control Center and see if it works.

I’m going to tap onto Focus Modes and I’m going to choose my Work Focus first of all.

Of course if you’re doing this on a location basis or by time of day it’ll happen automatically (you haven’t got to go into Control Center each time).

So I’m going to tap onto Work and just like that my Watch Face has changed.

I’ve now got my Calendar, my To-Do list – everything that I need.

Let’s go on to the Gym Focus and again almost immediately my Apple Watch has changed to my Gym Focus.

You can see the little Focus icon at the top of each Watch Face.

And of course if I go back to Personal we get the lovely Mr Tibbs coming back again.

There are tons of things that you can do with Focus Modes – from custom icons and wallpapers to custom home screens on your devices, and now custom watch faces as well!

Make sure you Subscribe to my channel down below, there are loads more #QuickTips for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch just waiting for you there.

See you next time.

 

Here’s another #QuickTip to help you make the most out of Focus on iOS 15.

This is a quick guide to how you can set your Wallpaper to change automatically when your Focus mode goes on or off.

Right so there are two parts this tutorial – the first half is going to be in the Photos App where we’re going to choose the pictures we want to use as our Wallpaper then we’re going to jump into Shortcuts and create some automations to make those Wallpapers change when our Focus mode changes.

Don’t be scared by Shortcuts, it’s really simple and I’ll guide you through it step-by-step.

So first of all let’s go into the Photos App and here you’ll see I’ve got a few different images that I want to use as my Wallpapers.

You can probably see that I’ve got the iPhone 13 Wallpapers here, but you can use any images you want – Photos from your camera roll or Wallpapers you found online.

When you’ve chosen the first Wallpaper you want to use for a particular Focus mode you need to press the Share button and then press Add To Album create a new album.

Here you give it a name that you can find easily later, so for me with my Gym Wallpaper I’m calling the album Gym Focus.

When you’ve done this go onto the next Wallpaper you want to use and again you’re going to press Share, Add To Album and create New Album.

You may have Work Focus, or Personal Focus, or Driving Focus – whatever album name you want to use, create all the albums you need now so when we get into Shortcuts they’re ready to use.

I’m going to have three for now: Work, Personal and Gym.

And now let’s have a look at making those Wallpapers change automatically.

All right I’m going to open up the Shortcuts App on my iPhone and then we’ll go to the bottom to where it says Automation on that tab bar.

Now at this point, a little cheeky reminder that if you haven’t Subscribed to my Channel already maybe you might consider doing that to help me out.

I really want to grow and share my #QuickTips with as large an audience as possible so your Subscribe or your Like on this video could make all the difference.

Right. enough of that!

Let’s press the Plus button in the top corner to create a new Automation.

At this point we want to make a Personal Automation which means that that Automation will be triggered by something happening on your device.

In fact those triggers come up on the next screen, and if we scroll right down to the bottom you should see all of your different Focus modes are listed there as different triggers.

I’ll go onto the Gym one first.

When I’ve chosen that Gym Focus mode in Shortcuts I then have the option of enabling my Automation to run when the Focus mode is turned on or when the Focus mode is turned off.

With this you can add loads of customisation but to make it simple I’m going to go for when Gym is turned on.

Then on the next screen we can add the Actions we want to apply when Gym mode is enabled.

With Shortcuts you can add thousands of different actions here and your phone can do some really clever things as soon as you enable that Focus mode.

Let’s keep it simple for today and we’re going to find the photo that we saved in that album earlier.

So the first action you want is called Find Photos.

Type that in and then tap on it to add to your Shortcut.

From here you have a few different options, so we want to tap on to Add Filter and then rather than choosing all of our Photos in the Recents category we’re going to tap on there and we’re going to choose the album that we created earlier.

I’ve got lots of albums so I can search at the top for Gym Focus and then when I’ve selected that album Shortcuts will look for pictures in that album for me to use.

There’s only one there so it’s obvious what the Wallpaper choice will be.

Next up is our second and final action for this particular Shortcut.

Tap on the Add Action button and this time you’re looking for Set Wallpaper.

Now Set Wallpaper will automatically take the picture that you found in the action above and then we have a few options on how we’re going to display it as our Wallpaper.

For example I’m going to turn the Preview off so it won’t come up on the screen and I’m going to turn Perspective Zoom on to give it that slight depth effect.

I would definitely suggest you turn Show Preview off as well but Perspective Zoom is really up to your taste.

When you’ve added that Action press Next in the top corner.

On this screen you get a summary of your Shortcut and you’ll notice at the bottom there’s a new switch that says Ask Before Running.

Now if you have this on you’ll get a little banner notification each time you change Focus mode asking if you want to run this Shortcut.

I don’t want that – I want it to happen in the background seamlessly so I’ll turn that off and then I’ll confirm that choice.

Then when I press Done my Shortcut is saved and active.

We can check this immediately by returning to the Home Screen and then pulling down from the top right corner to Control Centre and turning on my Gym Focus.

And you’ll see even on the Control Centre that that Wallpaper has now changed to that yellow-y orange image.

But we haven’t set up Personal and Work yet!

So I’ll jump back into Shortcuts, go back onto the Automation tab, remind you once more to Subscribe, and then we’re going to create a New Action in the top corner.

Once again I’m going to create a Personal Automation that runs on the device, and as I scroll down my list of triggers and get the Focus modes I can choose Personal Focus.

From here again I can choose to have the trigger enabled when Focus is turned on or off and just like before I’ll make sure my Personal Focus is turned on.

This Shortcut will run our first action just like before – the one called Find Photos.

You’re going to tap onto Add Filter and you’re going to find the album for whatever Focus group you want next.

For me this is the Personal Focus, and that’s going to be the teal-blue Wallpaper.

Then when I’ve selected that picture I’m going to go to add a New Action and I’m going to choose Set Wallpaper.

Just like before I’ll turn off Show Preview and as per my taste I’ll turn on Perspective Zoom.

Then tap Next in the top corner and once more you want to turn off Ask Before Running.

When you press Done that automation will be saved and you’ll see it on the Automation screen.

And then guess what – we’re doing it a third time!

I won’t show you the process again (you can easily go back and re-watch the video if you need to) but what I will show you now is if I go up to the Home Screen by swiping up from the bottom and then pulling down Control Centre, every time I change my Focus Mode between Work, Personal and Gym the Wallpaper on my iPhone changes seamlessly, automatically in the background.

No notifications, no pop-ups, no confirmation – it just works!

And whilst I’m changing my Focus mode using Control Centre this will of course work just as well if you’re using a location based trigger or a time based trigger or however else you switch between your Focus modes.

Your Wallpaper will change when you’re in that mode no questions asked.

Okay, and that’s it for today’s #QuickTip!

I really hope you found this video helpful – there are dozens and dozens more iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 videos on my YouTube channel down below so please head there now check them out and maybe Subscribe too.

I’ll see you next time.