You’ve got a brand new Galaxy Watch Ultra and want to get the most out of it. You’ve come to the right place as I put together some tips, and secret and not-so-secret features to check out. Some of these tips will also work with the Galaxy Watch 7 and even older Galaxy watches once they get the update to Wear OS 5.

Double Pinch Action

This nifty double pinch action lets you control your watch without using the other hand. Go to Settings, Buttons, and Gestures, and turn on double pinch as it’s not on by default. Here’s a quick list of what you can do with double pinch: take a photo on your phone when you use the watch’s camera remote app, answer and hang up a phone call, play and pause in the stock music app, start and stop the stopwatch, and dismiss an alarm or a timer. You’ll see this icon in places you can use double pinch once you’ve turned it on.

Utilizing the Quick Button

The Galaxy Watch Ultra’s Quick button can be beneficial. Here’s how to get the most out of it: go to Settings, Buttons, and Gestures, and click the Quick button. Here, you can set what it launches when you press it just once. That could be Samsung Health so it launches the workout page, or you can automatically launch any of your favorite workout types like walking or running with just one press. Or the Quick button could activate the stopwatch, flashlight, or water lock.

Quick Button During Workouts

During a workout, a short press of the quick button starts the exercise. It can then skip the countdown when you press it again, and if you press it once more, it will pause and then resume your workout. A double press of the quick button will record a lap when you’re running or cycling or start the next session if you’re doing intervals and weights. A long press of the quick button will finish your workout, or if you’re in a multiport mode, it will start the next exercise.

Customizing Side Buttons

These side buttons can be programmed to do different things. Go to Settings, Buttons, and Gestures, and scroll down to Home Button, which is this one right here. Double-press the Home Button, and then you can go to the recent apps. You can bring up accessibility shortcuts, bring up exercise shortcuts, or even launch your favorite app. This is how I love to bring up Spotify using this method. You can also change what happens when you press and hold this button. So instead of Bixby, you could swap it out for the power-off menu, which is what I like, or you could also just change it to activate the Google Assistant.

Back Button Functions

For the back button, this one down here, you can go to the previous screen or show your recent apps. The Galaxy Watch Ultra and Watch 7 have sleep apnea detection now, and it’s coming soon to other earlier Galaxy watches with a software update. Turn it on by going to the Samsung Health Monitor app on your phone, and it will walk you through the setup process. Note that it turns itself off automatically after two nights after showing if you do or don’t have signs of sleep apnea.

Turbocharging Battery Life

Here’s how to turbocharge the battery life on your Galaxy Watch by turning off certain features you might not need. First, stress monitoring settings: go to Health, Stress, and change that to manual. Then, heart rate monitoring: if you don’t need that running continuously, you can change the setting to run every 10 minutes while you’re sitting still or select it for manual readings only.

You can also turn off the always-on display. To do that, swipe down from your clock face and tap the always-on icon to deselect it. There’s also a power-saving mode that turns off the always-on display, the wake-up gesture, and Wi-Fi. It also decreases screen brightness and the screen timeout. During a workout, you might consider using exercise power-saving mode. That’s on the settings screen of your workout tile; just scroll down to exercise power-saving.

Using Your Galaxy Watch as a Watch

You can also use your watch just as a watch. In the battery menu, scroll down to “Watch Only,” and this will only show you the time, nothing else.

Listening to Music and Audio

You can listen to music and audio on the Galaxy Watch speaker, which is cool. Open the music app, press play, and it should automatically start playing on your watch speaker as long as you don’t have Bluetooth headphones connected.

For Spotify, open the app, find your track, hit play, and it should ask you to select a device. Choose this watch, and you’re jamming out. This also works for YouTube, which is super cool.

Night Mode

Night mode changes the brightness and adds a red filter over your watch face to make it easier to see at night. It works on the Ultra Analog and Simple Ultra watch faces on the Galaxy Watch Ultra. You can long press to bring up the watch face switcher, then set customize and set this option to come on automatically, have it on all the time, or turn it off altogether.

Temperature Sensor

You can use the temperature sensor on the Ultra and the Watch 7 to measure the temperature of stuff around you. This is actually in the Play Store. Search for an app called Thermo Check and then download it. Now take your arm, cup of coffee, table…

Hold the watch a certain distance away and take its temperature.

Switching Between Apps

If you have multiple apps running and then go back to the watch face, you can see and quickly switch back to any of them by pressing on the icon at the bottom of the screen. For example, you can see I’ve got a workout going, Spotify open, and a stopwatch. I can tap each of these to switch back into them quickly.

Notify When Left Behind

Always leaving your watch behind at the gym? Turn on “Notify When Left Behind” so you’ll get a notification on your phone. Open up the Samsung Find app, then tap your watch, and toggle on “Notify When Left Behind.” You can also do the reverse and get notified if you leave your phone behind while you’re wearing the watch. That’s in Settings, Advanced Features, and then choose Disconnection Alerts. You can make it stand out and get your attention by selecting the option that says “Full-Screen Alert with Sound and Vibration.”

Ticking Sound

Your watch can make the ticking sound like a traditional watch. Go to Settings, Sounds, and Vibrations, and then System Sounds, and choose Ticking if your watch face supports it. Make sure it’s really quiet around you and put the watch to your ear. Sounds pretty cool!

Emergency SOS Setup

Something I hope you’ll never need to use is Emergency SOS, but it is important to set it up properly just in case. Go to Settings, Safety, and Emergency, and the first thing you probably want to do here is turn on Hard Fall Detection. If you take a tumble and don’t respond to the countdown, it will automatically play a sound and call for help. You can scroll further down and make sure that this only activates during a workout, or you can keep this on all the time.

To get the watch to text your location and an SOS message to your emergency contacts, first, go back into that general Safety and Emergency panel, then choose Emergency Contacts and make sure you add them on your phone. Now go back to the watch, choose the “Share Info with Emergency Contacts” toggle, and make sure that is turned on.

Using Gboard for Voice-to-Text

Samsung keyboard isn’t the best when it comes to voice-to-text dictation, at least it’s not great with my accent. So, I like to use Gboard instead. Download it from the Play Store, then set it as your default keyboard by going to Settings, General, Input, and then Keyboard List and Default. Make sure to select Gboard here. Now, when you bring up the keyboard, it will use Google’s speech engine, which I found is a lot more accurate.

Google Maps Integration

Another Google tip: your watch can give you the same turn-by-turn directions from your phone in Google Maps on your wrist. Open the Maps app on the watch, then scroll down to Settings, find Mirroring, and then select any or all of these options from driving, walking, cycling, and transit.

Charging Your Watch

There’s no reverse wireless charging of the 7 and Ultra from the back of Samsung phones anymore because of that redesigned bioactive sensor. But you can still charge your watch from a phone as long as you have your USB-C charger. Just plug it in like this. If you’re wondering if you can use older Galaxy Watch chargers with the Ultra and 7, I’ve got one here from the Galaxy Watch 6. It works.

Final Thoughts

There are so many cool things you can do on these watches, and this video just scratches the surface. So, if you want more tips, drop me a comment below. And if you already know all these, you get a gold star. May your watch be blessed with extra battery life. See you!