Complications & Widgets

You don’t always need to open the app. Complications put data right on your wrist, Control Center gives you quick toggles, and Siri handles voice.

Complications

Glance at your wrist to see temperature, lock status, or how many lights are on — and much more.

Complications are built in the iPhone app’s Widgets tab: create a named preset, choose its type and entities, and save — it syncs to your watch. To put one on your watch face, long-press the face → Edit → add the Wrist Assistant complication and pick your preset.

Types

Custom Icon — A simple icon (any SF Symbol) that triggers an action on tap. Clean and minimal.
Entity State — A single entity’s value with an icon. Temperature, lock status, door sensors.
Gauge — A visual meter that fills based on a value. Ring, fill bar, or Apple’s native gauge style. Supports color gradients and configurable min/max.
Multi-Entity — Stack up to 4 entities in one complication. Render as circles or a compact list, with per-entity colors and tap actions.
Status Summary / Status Wheel — Home overview: lights on, people home, temperature, doors secured. You can pick specific entities for each category instead of showing all — for example, only count certain lights or specific door sensors. Render as a list (“Status”) or a pie wheel (“Status Wheel”).
Conditional Icon — Icon and color that react to an entity’s state. Configure separate icons, colors, and background colors for the active and inactive states.
Countdown — Live countdown for a Home Assistant timer entity. Tap to start, pause, or resume; triple-tap to cancel.
Camera Snapshot — Live snapshot preview from any camera entity, right on your watch face. Configure a viewport crop to focus on the important part of the frame — especially useful for wide-angle cameras. Separate crops for circular vs rectangular sizes. On single-accent watch faces (Color, X-Ray), an Accent Color Behavior picker controls how the snapshot renders — Match face color or Greyscale.

All types work across every watchOS complication size — circular, rectangular, inline, and corner.

Tap Actions

Each complication has a configurable tap action, chosen from a dropdown in the editor:

Refresh Data — Update all complications at once.
Open App — Open the watch app.
Open Page — Jump to a specific watch app page. It can also peek a hidden page if a Peek Page tile already targets it and you have the Multiple Pages Pro feature (see Page Peek → Hidden Pages).
Toggle Device — Toggle a device on or off.
Run Scene — Activate a Home Assistant scene.
Run Script — Execute a Home Assistant script.
Start / Pause Timer — For Countdown complications. Start, pause, or resume; tap 3× to cancel.
Cancel Timer — Immediate cancel.
Open Room Page — Open the page for your current room.
Add Todo — Dictate a todo item and add it to a Home Assistant to-do list.
Run HTTP Action — Fire a custom HTTP request from your HTTP Actions library.

Rectangular complications use per-row / per-category actions where appropriate. Circular complications get their own Circular Tap Action dropdown in the editor — choose something distinct for the round watch face slots while rectangular layouts keep their row actions.

Double Tap

Most complications (Entity State, Gauge, Custom Icon, Conditional) also have a separate Double Tap Action with the same options as the single tap — wait about a second after the first tap, then tap again within three seconds. Countdown reserves a triple-tap for cancel, and the list styles (Multi-Entity, Status Summary) use per-row actions instead, so they don’t offer a separate double tap.

Customization

Each complication exposes:

Display mode — Icon, text, or a combination (Pro unlocks Icon display mode).
Icon — Any SF Symbol, plus accent color (solid or gradient) and background color.
Label text, text size, font weight, font design — Default, monospaced, or serif.
Style-specific options — Gauges add style (system / ring / fill), min, max, gradient end color, and decimal truncation. Multi-Entity and Status Summary add per-entry icons, colors, and tap actions.

For Multi-Entity and Status Summary complications in list layout, each row honors its own tap action, and you can hide a row’s icon or name for dense, value-forward rows (hide both and the value fills the row). Status Summary list rows right-align the value, with the icon on the leading edge.

Action Feedback

When you tap a complication that performs an action — a toggle, scene, or script — it can flash to confirm the action landed. In the editor’s Action Feedback section:

Flash on Success — Show a success flash when the action completes (on by default).
Flash Color — The color of the flash.
Flash Duration — How long it lingers.

If an action or refresh fails, the complication shows a small ”✕” badge so you know it didn’t go through — useful given watchOS’s tight limits on background updates.

Camera Freshness Overlays

Camera complications can surface “how fresh is this image?” through two optional overlays, each with its own corner (top-left / top-right / bottom-left / bottom-right):

Change indicator dot — Small dot that flashes when a new frame arrives.
Timestamp — Absolute timestamp of the last frame. Toggle 12-hour, AM/PM, and seconds independently.

Turn either on to reassure yourself the image isn’t stale; turn both off for a clean frame.

Locked Presets (Free Mode)

Free mode allows one active complication preset. Other presets still render as read-only bubbles with a lock badge. Tap the bubble body to open the paywall, or tap the inline Use This pill to promote that preset into the primary slot without opening the paywall — so you can try different presets before deciding to upgrade.

Refresh

Each complication refreshes on its own schedule — 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes, or never. Tap to force a refresh anytime; if a refresh fails, a small ”✕” badge appears (see Action Feedback). watchOS limits actual refresh frequency — that’s an Apple restriction, not something the app can override.

Complications fetch live data directly from your server for accurate counts and readings — not just cached state from the last app session.

Control Center

On watchOS 26 and later, Wrist Assistant adds toggles and actions to your watch’s Control Center (press the side button).

Entity Toggle — On/off buttons for lights, switches, fans, locks, etc. Run Action — One-tap scene, script, or automation buttons.

Add them by pressing the side button → scroll down → Edit → find Wrist Assistant. Configure which entities show up in Settings → Watch Control Center.

Smart Stack Widgets

Wrist Assistant is also available in the Smart Stack (swipe up from your watch). Add it by scrolling to the bottom of the Smart Stack → tap Edit → find Wrist Assistant.

Siri Shortcuts

Control your home through Siri using these built-in voice phrases:

“Toggle the porch light with Wrist Assistant”
“Turn on / Turn off the porch light with Wrist Assistant”
“Activate movie night with Wrist Assistant”
“Lock the front door with Wrist Assistant”
“Unlock the front door with Wrist Assistant”
“Close the blinds with Wrist Assistant”
“Play the kitchen speaker with Wrist Assistant”
“Check the front door with Wrist Assistant”
“Show [page] status with Wrist Assistant” — opens a status page as a Siri response view
“Quick Wrist Assistant” — dictate an item to add to your configured Home Assistant to-do list

In the Shortcuts app

Beyond the spoken phrases above, more actions are available in the Shortcuts app for manual shortcuts and time/location-based automations. You can build these into your own shortcuts:

Toggle Entity
Activate Scene
Get Entity State
Lock / Unlock
Close Cover
Play/Pause Media
Add to List
Run HTTP Action — fire one from your HTTP Actions library
Get Camera Image — returns a still snapshot from a camera as an image you can pass to the rest of your shortcut
Show Status Page

A few actions stay Siri-voice / automation only and don’t appear as standalone, buildable steps in the Shortcuts library: Run Script, Run Automation, Open Cover, Set Brightness, and Set Temperature.

Combine these with Focus Filters for fully automated scenes — your phone switches to Sleep Focus, and your lights dim automatically.