The Top Ways to Customize Your Smartwatch

Looking for ways to jazz up your wearable once it's out of the box? From watch faces to interchangeable watch bands, this smartwatch customization guide covers three ways to add a personal touch to your tech.

Switch Out Your Smartwatch Bands

Your main option is swapping out your watch band, which may be easy or a bit of a challenge depending on the particular wearable product you own.  For example, if you purchased the Apple Watch Sport with the rubberized Sport band, you may be looking for a strap design that's a bit fancier. You could choose the woven stainless-steel Milanese Loop band (now available in both silver and Space Black), the calf-leather Classic Buckle strap, or the quilted Leather Loop strap.

With most Wear smartwatches, any 22mm watch band should work. If you're unsure whether a particular watch strap is compatible with your wearable, make sure to ask the retailer for more information.

Switching out the watch band or watch strap is about as much as you can do when it comes to customizing a smartwatch from a hardware standpoint unless you want to start from scratch and buy a new product with a different-color casing.

Change Your Smartwatch Face

Head to the appropriate app store for your smartwatch and search for watch faces. You can choose from a ton of third-party smartwatch options when you own a Wear device. There are some wonderful choices from brands like Melissa Joy Manning, MANGO, and Y-3 Yohji Yamamoto.

While Apple currently doesn't support third-party watch faces, you can change the image on your device's screen to a number of preset options. On the upside, Apple's smallish selection of watch faces can be customized with so-called complications, such as the addition of weather information or current stock prices. Plus, you can create a custom watch face using photos stored on your iPhone.

Don't forget to take a deep dive into your smartwatch's settings menu. Here, you'll find plenty of options for software customizations as well, from the way in which you receive alerts to screen brightness and sound. While these features may seem insignificant, taking the time to tweak them to your liking can ultimately result in a product that is perfectly tailored to your needs.

Install Smartwatch Complications

You can further customize your watch with smartwatch complications. Complications are extra features you can add to your watch face. For example, you can add calculators, to-do lists, and weather information. There are also more advanced ones like the Spotify complication, which allows you to control the streaming music service from your watch face.