Navigate your watch with wrist gestures

Along with swiping, you can get around your watch with wrist gestures.

Important:

• Wrist gestures navigation with your watch is only available on watches that run Wear 2.x or greater. Learn how to check your watch’s version.
• When you use wrist gestures, your battery life may slightly decrease.

On most watches, wrist gestures are turned on by default. To make sure they're turned on:

1. If your screen is dim, tap it to wake up the watch.
2. From the top of the screen, swipe down.
3. Tap Settings Advanced features Gestures.
   • Wear 2:  Tap Settings  Gestures.

To test and practice wrist gestures, tap Launch tutorial in this setting.

Things you can do with wrist gestures

Tip: Remember that your watch responds to the direction and quickness of your wrist's motion, rather than the range of the motion.

Scroll through notifications

To see your first notifications

1. If you can't see your screen, wake up the watch or tilt the screen towards you.
2. Quickly flick your wrist away from you, then slowly turn it back towards you to display the notification.

To scroll to the next notification

Quickly flick your wrist away from you, then slowly turn it back towards you.

To scroll back a notification

Slowly turn your wrist away from you then quickly flick it back towards you.

Take action on a notification

You can use wrist gestures to select options in a menu or go back to a previous screen.

To see more details or take an action

Hold your arm in front of you and quickly push down, then bring it back normally to the original position.

When you push down, it'll take you to that notification's first action. Push down a second time and it'll select that first action, which is the most common action. You can't select or perform an action after the first action with  gestures alone.

To go back

Hold your arm in front of you and quickly pivot up, then bring it back normally to the original position.

Tip: Pivoting up does not exit an app. To go back to the main screen, shake your wrist.

If you're replying to a message, you can use this gesture to see the original message. You can also use this gesture to cancel a voice action before it sends.

From the main watch screen

To open the apps menu

When on the main watch screen, hold your arm in front of you and quickly push down, and bring it back normally to the original position.

To open the settings menu 

When on the main watch screen, slowly turn wrist away from you, then quickly flick back towards you.

Back to the main watch screen

Hold your arm in front of you and quickly shake your wrist a couple of times. You can use this gesture to go back or cancel an action before it’s completed.