How to Open Control Center on Apple Watch
The Control Center on Apple Watch gives you quick access to essential toggles — airplane mode, Wi-Fi, battery percentage, water lock, Do Not Disturb, and more — without digging through menus or asking Siri. But how you open it depends on which generation of Apple Watch you own and which version of watchOS is running on it.
What Is Control Center on Apple Watch?
Control Center is a panel of shortcut tiles that sits outside your regular app grid. Think of it as the watch equivalent of iOS Control Center — a fast-access layer for system settings and status indicators you'd otherwise need to hunt for.
Common tiles you'll find there include:
- Airplane Mode — cuts wireless connections
- Battery percentage — shows remaining charge
- Water Lock — locks the screen during swimming
- Theatre Mode — keeps the display dark until tapped
- Ping iPhone — sends an audible alert to your paired iPhone
- Do Not Disturb / Focus modes
- Flashlight (on supported models)
You can also customize which tiles appear and reorder them to suit how you actually use the watch.
How to Open Control Center: The Basic Method
On watchOS 10 and later, Apple changed how Control Center is accessed — and this trips up a lot of people who upgraded from older software.
watchOS 10 and Later
Apple moved Control Center away from a swipe gesture on the watch face. Here's how to open it now:
- Press the Side Button (the long rectangular button below the Digital Crown)
- Control Center slides up from the bottom of the screen
That's it. One press of the Side Button opens Control Center from any screen, including the watch face.
⌚ This was a significant change from previous watchOS versions, where the Side Button opened the Dock (your recently used apps). In watchOS 10, the Dock was removed and the Side Button was reassigned.
watchOS 9 and Earlier
If you're running an older version of watchOS, the method is different:
- Swipe up from the bottom of the watch face
This reveals Control Center as an upward-scrolling panel. The swipe gesture only works from the watch face itself — if you're inside an app, you'll need to press the Digital Crown first to return to the watch face, then swipe up.
Opening Control Center From Inside an App
Behavior here varies by watchOS version:
| watchOS Version | How to Open Control Center |
|---|---|
| watchOS 10+ | Press the Side Button from any screen |
| watchOS 9 and earlier | Go to watch face first, then swipe up |
In watchOS 10 and later, you no longer need to exit an app first. The Side Button shortcut works globally, which is a meaningful usability improvement for people who spend most of their time inside apps like Workout or Maps.
How to Customize Control Center Tiles 🔧
Once Control Center is open, you can rearrange or remove tiles:
- Scroll to the bottom of Control Center
- Tap Edit
- Drag tiles using the grip handles to reorder them
- Tap the red minus button to remove a tile
- Tap Add to restore removed tiles
- Press the Digital Crown or tap Done to save
Customization is stored on the watch itself, not synced from your iPhone, so changes you make here won't affect your iPhone's Control Center layout.
Why You Might Not See the Expected Behavior
A few variables affect how Control Center behaves in practice:
watchOS version is the biggest factor. If you recently updated from watchOS 9 to watchOS 10 and found that swiping up no longer does anything useful, that's expected — the gesture was retired. Knowing your watchOS version (found in the Watch app on iPhone under General > About, or on the watch under Settings > General > About) tells you immediately which method applies to you.
Apple Watch model matters for tile availability. Older models running the latest compatible watchOS may have slightly different tile options — for example, the Flashlight tile isn't available on all models.
Active app state affected older watchOS versions more than current ones. On watchOS 9 and earlier, being inside a full-screen app could block the swipe-up gesture entirely, requiring a Digital Crown press first. This friction is largely gone in watchOS 10+.
Complications and third-party apps occasionally capture swipe input on older watchOS versions, which could interfere with the swipe-up gesture on affected watch faces.
A Note on watchOS Version Differences Over Time
Apple tends to restructure navigation gestures with major watchOS releases. The shift in watchOS 10 — moving Control Center to the Side Button — reflects a broader reorganization of what each button does:
- Digital Crown: Returns to watch face or home screen, scrolls content
- Side Button (watchOS 10+): Opens Control Center
- Side Button (watchOS 9 and earlier): Opened the Dock
Understanding which version introduced which behavior helps make sense of why guides online sometimes contradict each other. A tutorial written for watchOS 8 will describe a swipe gesture that simply no longer applies in watchOS 10.
How straightforward this feels in practice depends on which watch you're running, which watchOS version it's on, and whether you've carried habits over from an older model or an earlier software version. Those three variables together shape the experience more than any single step does.