The Action Button is only one extra control on the Apple Watch Ultra, but there are great benefits that can be had with it, if you know how to set it up and use it.
After seven years of the Apple Watch with its Digital Crown and its side button, Apple has introduced a model with a third control. The new Action button is big, orange, and powerful.
In theory, the new button gives divers, extreme sports people, and athletes a way to specifically launch one of half a dozen Watch features like starting a workout. In practice, though, one option is to use it to launch a Shortcut -- which means a single press can start all of the new functions, and just about anything else the Watch can do.
There are three ways to set up this button for the first time.
How to start setting up the Action button
- Follow the prompts during initial setup of the Watch
- Later on, go to Settings on the Apple Watch and tap Action Button
- Use the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and do the same thing
In each case, you get a list of possible actions, and can tap to select one. Other than Shortcuts, the actions available are:
- Backtrack
- Dive
- Flashlight (Torch outside US)
- Stopwatch
- Waypoint
- Workout
Dive is a curious one, and will probably be the least-used, because Apple Watch Ultra can be set to automatically detect when you're diving. Turn on the Dive app, and it will immediately show a real-time updated depth of water.
There's also more to some of these options, such as the Workout one. If you don't do anything other than select Workout for the button, then pressing it will open the Workout app.
However, the Action button also comes with an option called First Press. After you've set the button to be for Workouts, you can choose that it actually launches one specific workout for you.
Although it's not called this, there is a kind of Second Press, too. It's when you're doing a workout and can press the button to mark a lap time, say, or that you're changing from cycling to running in the same workout.
To set a First Press, you initially pick one of the main functions for the Action button. Then, if that function allows for it, you get a First Press option.
There's no First Press option for the Flashlight, for instance, but there is for Workout. This is where you can say you want the Workout app and a particular session in it.
Using the Action button
In each case bar one, the Action button acts specifically as a trigger to launch a feature, to end it, or to mark segments and laps like this. Users will pick one before they start their dive or workout.
Even though there is some fine-tuning with setting up First Press and so on, in general if a user wants the button to do something else, they have to go through set up again.
That's because the idea of the Action button is to surface one feature, one action, that the user most needs. All of the functions, all of the possible options, remain available to all Apple Watch Ultra users, it's just that they have to tap through the screen or complications to get them running.
It makes sense that there would be just one thing that the button does, so that the owner always knows what's happening, even without looking.
But if you do want to, say, start a workout, turn on the flashlight, and send a text message to say you'll be late coming home, you can do it from this Action button. You just have to set the button to run a Shortcut.
The Action button is large, it protrudes from the case, and it's orange
How to stop using the Action button
When you're done with a workout, you can just tap the Action button. When you're done with a dive, you could tap it then, too, or you could just get out of the water.
At times, though, it will be necessary to pause what the Action button is doing. Whatever the Watch is currently doing, whether it was trigged by the Action button or not, you can pause it.
Press and hold both the new Action button and the newly enlarged Digital Crown one, at the same time.