Tips, tricks and apps for your Galaxy Watch 8

The Galaxy Watch 8 is my favorite smartwatch. Here are six tips and two apps that get more out of it. I didn’t know some of these myself for a long time.

Tip 1: Gesture control

Your hand becomes the remote control. There are three gestures:

• Double tap with index finger and thumb: Answer calls, stop alarms, pause music or trigger the camera as a remote shutter.
• Shaking your hand: Decline calls, turn off alarms or swipe away notifications. For me, this is the most important gesture.
• Knocking motion with your fist: Turn on the flashlight, start a workout or open your favorite app. You decide what happens.

By default, everything is turned off. You can activate the gestures directly on the watch or in the Galaxy Wearable app on your smartphone. Almost everything can be configured, just like the button assignment. Most gestures, however, only really work well with Samsung’s own apps.

Tip 2: Watch faces with a story and GIFs

I was tired of the same watch faces. Two variants make the watch livelier.

1. Story background: Open Samsung Gallery, tap “Story” at the bottom and say what you want to see, such as beach, vacation or your dog. The phone builds a photo story from it. In the Galaxy Wearable app, you then choose Watch faces, Edit photo, Background, Story and your story. Every turn of your wrist shows a different photo. Especially after a vacation, I find that brilliant.
2. GIF as a watch face: This is my personal highlight. Look for a GIF, ideally 480 x 480 pixels, save it in the gallery and select it in the Wearable app under Watch faces, Photos, Background. Animations use more battery, though. Try it for a few days and decide for yourself.

With the pen icon, you adjust the time color and complications so that everything stays readable.

Tip 3: The secret menu for faster animations

This is how you activate developer mode: Settings, About watch, Software information, then tap the software version five times in a row. At the very bottom of the settings, the developer options appear.

A lot of what’s there is a pure developer tool and does nothing in everyday life. I like the three animation entries: window animation scale, transition animation scale and animator duration scale. If you set all three to 0.5x, the watch feels much snappier, faster, more direct and more responsive. Samsung could have set it up like this from the factory.

An honest warning: don’t touch anything you don’t understand. Some settings can put the watch into an unusable state.

Tip 4: Unlock your smartphone with your watch

If you use your phone constantly, unlocking quickly gets annoying. You can set the phone to stay unlocked as long as you wear the Galaxy Watch. Only when the Bluetooth connection is lost or the phone has been inactive for four hours does it lock again.

Here’s how: Settings, Lock screen, Extended unlock, enter PIN, Trusted devices, Add device and tap the Galaxy Watch 8. That saves me PIN or fingerprint at least 50 times a day.

Tip 5: Measuring the antioxidant index

No other smartwatch has had this feature so far. LEDs on the back shine light into the skin, and the watch calculates your carotenoids from it. Those are the antioxidants that make carrots orange and spinach dark green. The watch uses them to estimate how much fruit and vegetables you’ve eaten over the last few weeks.

Here’s how you measure: swipe up on the watch, Samsung Health, Antioxidant index, Measure. Take the watch off and press your thumb firmly on the sensor for five seconds. In the Samsung Health app, you see the trend and concrete food suggestions.

The feature is still in beta, and I’m skeptical. My first values weren’t flattering, even though I pay attention to a balanced diet. Also, the value hardly moves, whether I eat a burger or steamed vegetables.

Tip 6: The watch tells you when to go to bed

If you regularly go to sleep at the wrong time, you throw your circadian rhythm out of sync. That affects concentration, hormone balance and, in the long run, health. The right bedtime differs from person to person, one is a lark, the other an owl. That’s why blanket tips like “go to bed at 10 p.m.” don’t work for everyone.

The bedtime guidance feature measures your sleep rhythm for at least three nights and calculates an individual time window. This is how you set it up: Samsung Health, Sleep card, three dots at the top right, Bedtime guidance. It’s important that you enter your desired wake-up time. Also activate the bedtime notifications, then the watch speaks up on its own. For me it comes between 10:10 p.m. and 10:40 p.m., exactly when I switch off Netflix in the evening. I ignored it for weeks, but sometimes the watch is right.

Two apps for the Galaxy Watch 8

• Simple Wear: My personal favorite tip. The app needs a lot of permissions, but lets you control the smartphone from the watch. I watch YouTube videos on the Z Fold 7 and set it up a bit farther away. With the watch, I pause the video, adjust volume and brightness, lock the phone, toggle the flashlight, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or notification mode, or activate “Do not disturb”. You don’t have to reach for the smartphone for these little things.
• Bring: Probably the coolest shopping list. You write the list at home on the phone and even get suggestions for what else you might need. In the supermarket, you tick things off on your wrist. If someone at home adds something, it shows up on your watch immediately, because you can share the lists.

Verdict

The Galaxy Watch 8 can do more than you see at first glance. What helps me most are the animation setting, unlocking via watch and Simple Wear. For the antioxidant index, I’m waiting until the beta is over.