- watchOS 26 has removed several watch face designs
- They include the Gradient, Toy Story, and Vapor looks
- At the same time, there are no new faces to replace them
Typically, you expect big software updates to add features, not take them away. Yet sometimes a handful of things disappear in the process – and if you’re fond of a select few Apple Watch faces, you might be out of luck, as Apple is removing a number of well-known faces with the watchOS 26 update.
As spotted by Reddit user flogman12, Apple has ditched five faces in watchOS 26: the Fire and Water, Gradient, Liquid Metal, Toy Story, and Vapor designs.
It’s not known why these faces have been removed – Apple never gives a reason for removing faces or even announces that they’re gone – but they will likely be sorely missed by their fans. It’s possible that the faces were simply less popular than other options, and have been cleared out to make way for others.
Still, it’s not all bad news, as watchOS 26 has updated a bunch of new faces that are available for all of the best Apple Watches. While the company didn’t add any brand-new designs, it did bring its Liquid Glass visual style to a number of faces, bringing more translucency and light refraction to your Apple Watch.
Losing face
This isn’t the first time Apple has cut a selection of faces from its watchOS operating system. It did so last year with watchOS 11. It’s not an unusual move for the company, and it often does this to make room for other additions when it releases a major new watchOS update.
This may also have been done simply to keep the list of watch faces at a manageable number. After all, if you’re faced with a daunting list of hundreds of different designs to choose from it might feel a tad overwhelming.
The fact that the Toy Story face has been dropped is interesting, as this was the first feature-length film released by Pixar while Apple founder Steve Jobs was Pixar CEO. You would think that would give this watch face a solid connection to Apple, but that wasn’t enough to save it from being axed.
While watchOS 26 hasn’t added any all-new options to the Watch face gallery, it has brought a bunch of new features in other areas. Be sure to check out our picks for the best watchOS 26 features to see what’s new.
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