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Manual / Watch Face Complications

Watch Face Complications

A complication is one of the small readouts you can add to a watch face. Wrist Dope ships seven of them on Apple Watch and six on Wear OS, so a glance at your wrist answers the question you actually have between stages: what am I holding at this distance, and has the air changed. The biggest one is a mini range card, which on Wear OS is a tile. The smallest is your load and zero on a single line.

Seven or six

Seven on Apple Watch. Six on Wear OS, plus a Range Card tile.

Added on the watch

Touch and hold the watch face and edit it. The steps differ by watch.

Pro required

Without Pro they show the upgrade instead of dope. A free 7-day trial is offered.

First

Add one to your watch face

Complications are added by watchOS, not by Wrist Dope, so the flow is Apple's. Installing Wrist Dope on the watch is all it takes to make the seven available. Steps below match Apple's watchOS 26 instructions, checked against Apple's own guide.

  1. With the watch face showing, touch and hold the display, then tap Edit.
  2. Swipe left all the way to the end. If the face offers complications, they are on the last screen, drawn as empty outlines.
  3. Tap a slot to select it, then turn the Digital Crown (or scroll the list that appears) to Wrist Dope, and pick one of the seven.
  4. Press the Digital Crown to save, then tap the face to switch to it.

Not every face has every slot shape. The Range Card needs a face with a wide rectangular slot, and Modular Ultra and Infograph Modular both have one. If a complication you want is missing from the list, the slot you tapped is the wrong shape for it.

The seven

What each one shows

Range Card

Wide rectangular slot

A mini dope table for the active load: distance, elevation, and both wind columns. The row nearest your dialed distance is brighter and bolder.

Tap it: opens Live Fire.

Hold

Round or corner slot

One distance, with the elevation hold and an up or down arrow, and the wind hold with a left or right arrow underneath.

Tap it: opens Live Fire.

Elevation Hold

Round or corner slot

The elevation hold for one distance and nothing else, with the unit spelled out as MIL or MOA.

Tap it: opens Live Fire.

Wind Hold

Round or corner slot

The wind hold for one distance, in cyan, with the wind speed it was solved at. Pairs with Elevation Hold in the opposite corner.

Tap it: opens Wind.

Target

Round or corner slot

Your locked target: its name, the cardinal direction, the bearing in degrees, and the shot angle when it is a degree or more off flat.

Tap it: opens Target.

Density Altitude

Round slot, or the line above the time

Density altitude from your last conditions: the one number that tells you whether yesterday's dope still holds.

Tap it: opens Environment.

Active Load

The line above the time

Your active load and its zero distance, on one line.

Tap it: opens Wrist Dope.

Colour is consistent across all of them: distances in your accent colour, elevation in white, wind in cyan. If you have themed the app, the complications pick up the same hue.

Wrist Dope watch Settings scrolled to the Widgets section, showing Range Card Rows set to Last Dialed, Interval 100 yd and Wind Column 1 at 5 mph
Apple Watch Ultra

Settings → Widgets. Everything the complications render is chosen here.

Step 1

Choose the rows and the interval

On the watch, swipe to SETTINGS and scroll to the Widgets section. The first two rows decide which distances the Range Card shows:

  • Range Card Rows: Last Dialed, Spread or Custom. Last Dialed is the default.
  • Interval: the spacing between rows, 10, 25, 50, 100 or 200 yards. It defaults to 100, and it is deliberately separate from the in-app range card, which is usually much finer.

Choose Custom and eight more rows appear below, one per pinned distance. They start at 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 800 and 1000.

The Widget Interval picker on Apple Watch showing 100 yd in large orange type, a Turn to adjust hint and a Done button
Apple Watch Ultra

Every Widgets row opens the same picker: turn the crown, then tap Done.

Step 2

Turn the crown, tap Done

Tapping any row in the Widgets section opens a full-screen picker. Turn the Digital Crown to move through the values, then tap Done. The change takes effect within a couple of seconds, while the app is still open.

Values in these pickers follow your unit settings, so a metric shooter sets metres and km/h rather than yards and mph.

Wrist Dope watch Settings showing Wind Column 1 at 5 mph, Wind Column 2 at 10 mph, Wind From 3 o'clock and Hold Distance set to Last Dialed
Apple Watch Ultra

Two reference winds, the clock they blow from, and which distance the hold complications use.

Step 3

Set the wind columns and the hold distance

  • Wind Column 1 and Wind Column 2: the two reference speeds the Range Card solves, 5 and 10 mph out of the box. They become the W5 and W10 column headers.
  • Wind From: the clock position those reference winds blow from, relative to the target. 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock are full-value crosswinds; 12 and 6 are a head and tail wind.
  • Hold Distance: the one distance the Hold, Elevation Hold and Wind Hold complications solve. Leave it on Last Dialed and they follow whatever you dial in Live Fire; set a number and they stay pinned there.

Wind Hold has one extra habit worth knowing: when you have called a real wind in the app, it shows the hold for that wind, with the speed and clock on its label, instead of the Wind Column 1 reference.

Under the hood

How the eight rows get picked

The Range Card aims for eight distances and renders them as two columns of four. Which eight depends on the strategy you chose:

  • Last Dialed: a sliding window of eight distances at your interval, centred on the range you last dialed in Live Fire, snapped to that interval. Dial 500 with a 100-yard interval and you get 100 through 800 with 500 in the middle. Near the ends of your range-card limits the window slides rather than shrinks, so you always get eight rows where the trajectory allows.
  • Spread: eight distances spaced evenly between the Min Range and Max Range you set for the range card, snapped to the interval.
  • Custom: exactly the distances you pinned, sorted low to high with duplicates dropped.

Small slots get fewer rows, not smaller type past the point of legibility. On a tight face the second wind column goes first, then rows come off, and the window stays centred on the distance you dialed, so the row you care about is never the one that gets trimmed. Distances where the solver has no answer are dropped rather than printed as a fake 0.0, which is why the table sometimes ends short of your maximum.

Min Range, Max Range and the in-app row spacing live in the Range Card and Dope Card settings. Calling the wind and locking a target (what the Wind Hold and Target complications read) is covered in Target and Wind.

Be honest about this one

When they refresh, and when they don't

Complications are not live. They show a snapshot the watch app computed and handed to watchOS. There is no timer and no background poll; the app never wakes itself up to re-solve on the face.

  • They repaint while the app is open. Wrist Dope re-checks every couple of seconds and publishes when something the face actually shows has changed: the active load or an edit to it, the conditions, the range you dialed, the wind or target you set, your units or theme, any Widgets setting, or your Pro status. Nothing changed means nothing is rewritten.
  • A Siri command refreshes them too. Setting the wind or asking for a hold by voice republishes the snapshot without opening the app.
  • Closed app, frozen numbers. Walk from the truck to a 400-foot-higher firing point with the app closed and the face still shows the old air. Open Wrist Dope and it catches up in a second or two.

So the Range Card tells you when it has gone quiet. Forty-five minutes after the numbers were computed it adds a small clock icon and the time of the solve to its header. Before that it shows no timestamp at all, because a second clock next to the watch clock is just clutter. That mark is scheduled in advance, so it appears on time even with the app closed. The other six complications carry no stale mark, so treat the Range Card as your canary.

Access

Live dope needs Pro

All seven complications render real numbers on Wrist Dope Pro, including an active free trial and a legacy paid purchase. On the free tier, or once a trial has ended, each one shows a lock and the words Wrist Dope Pro in place of your dope. Tapping the lock opens the upgrade card on the watch, where the free 7-day trial starts.

Two details are worth knowing. In the second or two after launch while your purchase is still being verified, the complications keep showing live dope rather than flashing a lock at someone who has already paid. And buying Pro or starting a trial on the watch repaints them straight away. You do not have to re-add anything to the face.

Complication showing the wrong thing?

  1. “Open Wrist Dope to set a load.” There is no active load to solve. Open the app, go to GUNS and make a rifle and load active. Tapping the complication takes you there.
  2. A crosshair icon and “Dial”, “ELEV” or “WIND”. The hold complications have no distance yet. Dial a range on Live Fire once, or pin one under Hold Distance so they never go blank.
  3. A crosshair icon and “Aim”. Target has nothing captured. Point and lock a target on the TARGET page and it fills in.
  4. A lock instead of numbers. Pro is not active on this watch, or a trial has ended. Tap the complication to see where you stand.
  5. Numbers look stale. They probably are (see above). Open the app for a couple of seconds and let it republish. If the Range Card is showing a clock icon and a time, that is the app telling you the same thing.
  6. Wrong distances, or fewer rows than you expected. Check Range Card Rows and Interval under Settings → Widgets. On a small face the layout drops the second wind column and then rows to keep the type readable, and any distance the solver cannot reach is left out.

Still stuck? support@wristdope.com