Apple Watch Swipe Up Menu Gone? Here's How To Fix It

The Apple Watch has been around for close to a decade, and during this time, Apple has made frequent upgrades to its smartwatch lineup, even introducing different variants like the Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Ultra.

All Apple Watches run watchOS, Apple's dedicated smartwatch operating system. Like iOS, watchOS receives a major upgrade every year, with the latest version of the operating system being watchOS 10. Apple has made several improvements to watchOS over the years, adding features like the App Store, new workouts, sleep tracking, noise measuring, cycle tracking, and medication apps.

What has remained largely unchanged, though, is the watchOS interface. For example, pressing the Digital Crown opens the home screen where you can see all your apps. Similarly, swiping up from the bottom of the watch face always opens the Control Center. Like on the iPhone and iPad, Control Center on Apple Watch lets you use the Do Not Disturb feature, Airplane mode, Theater mode, and ping your iPhone, among others.

If you've recently upgraded your Apple Watch to watchOS 10, you might have noticed that swiping up on the watch face no longer opens Control Center and, instead, displays a bunch of widgets. If you're wondering why the convenient swipe-up menu has disappeared on your Apple Watch, the good news is that it's still around, but it needs to be accessed another way.

Apple calls watchOS 10 its milestone update for Apple Watch, and in many ways, it's the biggest software update since the Apple Watch was first released in 2014. Apple has not only redesigned many of its own apps but has also changed how you navigate the interface.

Swiping up on the watch face now displays the new Smart Stack feature on Apple Watch, a set of widgets that change based on the time, location, and activity. If you want to open Control Center on your Apple Watch, you now have to press the side button under the Digital Crown. To close the menu, press the side button again.

As an Apple Watch user, the side button isn't something I've used very often. Previously, pressing this button brought up the app switcher, where you could view and open your recent apps. The app switcher is now accessible by double pressing the Digital Crown.

Unfortunately, Apple doesn't offer a way to change how you open Control Center, which is a shame because pressing the side button doesn't feel nearly as intuitive as swiping up on the screen. If you've been a long-time Apple Watch user, navigating watchOS and using the different menu functions is probably second nature, and it might take a while for you to get used to the changes.