Apple Watch
The phone never comes out.
The hardest part of using a phone discreetly is holding a phone. The watch app moves the trigger to your wrist: pick a mode, start the camera, and fire the shutter without the phone leaving a pocket, a bag, or the table it is lying on.
What the watch can do
Choose a capture mode, open the camera on the phone, and take the shot. Glancing at a watch is one of the few things you can do in any room without it meaning anything.
- Pick photo or video mode from the wrist
- Open the camera on the paired iPhone
- Fire the shutter, with burst state reflected back on the watch
- The watch shows your remaining free captures for the day
How it connects, and what happens when it cannot
The watch talks to the phone over WatchConnectivity when the app is reachable. When it is not — the phone asleep in a bag, say — the watch publishes a Handoff activity instead, which surfaces a continuation on the phone that you tap once. It is the only mechanism that can legitimately wake the app from the wrist, and the watch tells you which of the two happened rather than silently failing.
Free and Pro on the watch
The watch has its own daily free allowance rather than being locked entirely: two photos and one video per day without Pro, and unlimited with it. The phone owns that count and pushes it to the watch, so it cannot be reset by fiddling with the watch alone.
Specifics
- Requires
- watchOS 10 or later
- Connection
- WatchConnectivity, with Handoff fallback
- Free allowance
- 2 photos + 1 video per day
- Pro allowance
- Unlimited
- Modes
- Photo and video
Read from AppleWatch Watch App/ and Shared/WatchSharedStore.swift.
What it will not do
- The watch cannot capture on its own. It is a remote for the phone's camera, and the phone has to be paired and nearby.
- When the phone is unreachable, Handoff needs one tap on the phone — the watch cannot force a suspended app to the foreground.
- The free tier is a daily allowance, not a trial: two photos and one video per day.
Common questions
- Does the Apple Watch record by itself?
- No. It is a remote shutter and mode picker for the camera on your paired iPhone. The phone does the capturing, which is also why the phone has to be nearby.
- What if my phone is not reachable?
- The watch falls back to Handoff: it publishes an activity that appears on the phone for you to tap. That is the only route iOS allows for waking a suspended app from the wrist, and the watch tells you which route it used.
- Is the watch app free?
- It has a free daily allowance — two photos and one video per day — and Pro removes the limit. The count is owned by the phone and pushed to the watch.
Try it yourself
Eclipse is free to download. The black screen mask, Face ID lock and slideshow stay free.
Download free on the App Store