Wear Pride on your wrist with new Apple Watch face

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Pride face
Apple has a new Pride face for the Apple Watch.
Photo: iDownload Blog

Rainbow-colored strings that do a wavy dance with every touch make up a new animated Pride face on the Apple Watch.

The new Pride face was discovered in updates to watchOS 4.3.1 and iOS 11.4 in advance of a rollout scheduled for June 4.

The discovery was made by Guilherme Rambo of 9to5Mac, which had previously reported on the new pride face when it was found in a beta version of iOS 11.3. Rambo said the June 4 release date is present inside the software, leading him to speculate Apple would announce it during the keynote of WWDC that day.

Celebrating Gay Pride is nothing new to Apple. CEO Tim Cook is openly gay and is known to tweet support for LGBTQ issues. In 2016, Apple issued a special pride watch for employees marching in the San Francisco Pride parade and marchers passed out rainbow-colored watch bands.

The following year, Apple offered a version of the Pride Edition band for sale and give proceeds to LGBTQ advocacy groups. The Watch Store on Cult of Mac sells a Pride band by Nyloon for $39.95.

Watch wearers can fly the new Pride face before Monday but would have to change the time to do so. This is risky, Rambo points out.

“We do not recommend this though, since changing the time on your devices can have bad consequences, including loss of health data, so do it at your own risk,” he said.

To activate the Pride face ahead of Monday’s release date:

  • Change the time on your iPhone. Go to Settings; tap General; then tap Date & Time.
  • Turn off the option to set automatically and set the date and time to next week, any day after June 4.
  • Tap Face Gallery on the Watch app.
  • The Pride face should appear in the section “New in watch OS.” Tap to select.

The website, iDownload Blog, which also lists the steps to find the new face, said users should have the commercial version of iOS 11.4 on their iPhones. The Pride face may not show up on public or developer betas.

Once the face is activated, Rambo recommends changing the time back as quickly as possible to avoid system issues.

Source: 9to5Mac and iDownload Blog

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