The Siri face watch has been swapped for a more powerful Smart Stack featuring interactive widgets and live activities in the inaugural watchOS 11 beta.
In its place is a much improved Smart Stacks system in watchOS 11, which integrates a new widget view and live activities while leveraging artificial intelligence to surface appropriate information at the right time.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the Siri watch face is no more. It might return in future betas or get updated with Apple Intelligence ahead of launch this fall because the companion Watch app on the paired iPhone still references it.
watchOS 11 removes the Siri watch face
The Siri face launched in watchOS 3, but the improved smart stack in watchOS 11 seems more powerful as it conveniently integrates a new widget view.
Some folks on Reddit complained about the new system being confusing though it’s too early to make a judgment as improvements will be made in later betas.
I saw complain that the cards in the new smart stack aren’t in order, whereas the Siri watch face was ordered by time of day. Well, the information provided by widgets in watchOS 11 is displayed based on date, time, location, sleep, fitness, etc.
Smart stack widgets are interactive, too. You can perform quick actions like marking a message as read or toggling your smart lights without using into an app.
watchOS 11 improves the Smart Stack feature
Furthermore, watchOS intelligence adds and removes suggested widgets in your smart stack based on what’s relevant in the moment. This is similar to how Siri intelligence would reorder items in your Siri watch face based on event timing.
You can also manually reorder cards in a smart stack by pinning them. Simply hit the yellow pin in the top-right corner, then drag a card. I also like how you just double tap on the watch face to bring up your smart stack and start scrolling.
WatchOS 11: Live Activities and Smart Stacks
watchOS 11’s Smart Stack has other things going for it. For example, live activities are now available on the Apple Watch for the first time. Introduced in iOS 16 on the iPhone, this enables apps that implement live activities to push live updates to your Lock Screen for things like order notifications, sports scores, etc.
On watchOS 11, live activities from apps live in your smart stack and get featured at the top of your smart stack when active. It’s a neat change as you can simply raise your wrist to see the latest information. Before watchOS 11, you had to turn the Digital Crown to browse the smart stack on your watch face.
And you can touch a live activity to open the corresponding app. If no app is found on the watch, then tthe fullscreen view opens to display more detail. Live activities also have a compact view shown at the bottom.
New watchOS 11 widgets: Distance, Training Load, etc.
watchOS 11 also brings useful new widgets, such as Distance and Training Load, along with an improved Photos widget and a weather alert one. And if you happen to use Shazam on your Apple Watch, your smart stack will automatically surface the Shazam widget when your watch detects music playing around you.
Apple will be testing watchOS 11 throughout the summer with its registered developers and public beta testers. The operating system will launch to the public alongside iOS 18 and other updates in the fall.
Apple has tightened up the system requirements for watchOS 11, with the Apple Watch Series 4 (2018), Series 5 (2019) and SE (202O) no longer supported.