With watchOS 8, Apple announced several new features for Apple Watch users, including a new Mindfulness app, photo sharing, and more. Typically, each new watchOS release comes with new watch faces. This year, however, Apple only showed off one new watch face—Portrait. However, in one of the WWDC 2021 sessions, it was revealed that there's another watch face Apple hasn't announced, called "World Timer."
During the “What's New in UIKit”session, which introduces the latest updates and improvements to the iOS user interface framework, Apple shows a screenshot of the Watch app in one of the demos (discovered by Duraid Abdul). Interestingly, this screenshot reveals a new watch face that was never announced by the company. Dubbed World Timer, the new watch face shows a world map with the time zones of dozens of cities around the world. This replicates some traditional mechanical watch models that also display the time zones of several cities around the world, similar to GMT watches - which also inspired one of the new watch faces in watchOS 7 last year.
watchOS 8: Apple could introduce more watch faces in September
However, GMT watches only display the time in two time zones simultaneously. It remains unclear why this "World Timer" watch face isn't included in the first watchOS 8 beta. Apple may be planning to add it sometime later this year. Last year, Apple unveiled only two new watch faces for watchOS 7 at WWDC 2020, holding back further releases for the September event. This could indicate a new strategy by the company to only unveil the new watch faces with the announcement of a new Apple Watch model, rather than introducing them at a developer event. Similar to recent iOS releases, which included additional new wallpapers. (Image: Apple)
