Outside of the casing material and band, there aren’t any other obvious customization options for the Apple Watch, but one product aims to change that. WatchDots are small, colorful vinyl stickers that change the look of the Apple Watch’s digital crown and side buttons.
Watchdots come in six colors and were conceived as a way for Apple Watch Sport owners to match their digital crowns to their bands, with some gold versions mimicking the colored digital crowns on the Apple Watch. The colors basically match the Sport Band, black, white, blue, pink and green, but there’s also a red option to mimic Tim Cook’s own Apple Watch, which has a red digital crown.
I have a stainless steel Apple Watch with a white sport band, so I ordered the matching white watchdots to try them out (I also ordered the pink ones, but they’re backordered). It’s hard to wax poetic about a set of nondescript vinyl stickers, but I love WatchDots. They tied the look of the band to the look of the Apple Watch, and they drew a lot of notice — not from the general public, but from other Apple Watch owners.
WatchDots cost $9.99, which is a bit expensive given the size of a vinyl sticker you might get for your iPhone or MacBook. For that price, you get three sets of dots in your chosen color (including 3 dots for the digital crown and three dots for the side buttons), with a bonus set in another color (mine was black).
As with any vinyl sticker, you’ll need a few tools to apply the WatchDots: a microfiber cloth to clean the digital crown and side buttons, a bright light, and some scissors to cut the pieces. Having applied a lot of screen protectors and vinyl stickers in my life, I looked at WatchDots and assumed they would be difficult to apply, but I was pleasantly surprised by a clever application method that only took seconds.
Each WatchDot sticker is backed with an opaque sticky material. You cut a square of it around the dot, line it up over the Apple Watch, press and hold for a few seconds. Finger pressure and heat make the decal adhere to the Apple Watch instead of the backing paper, which you can simply peel off. The opaque material can make it a little hard to see what you’re doing, but with decent lighting, it’s not a big deal. The makers of WatchDots are looking for a better backing material, so the opacity may change in the future.
The sizing of all the Watchdot pieces I received was uniform and each piece fit the watch well. On the digital crown, the dot doesn’t cover every trace of black on the edge (my natural dot is black because I have a stainless steel watch), but if the dot were bigger, it doesn’t seem like it would fit. Not edge to edge, but that’s not possible because the button is slightly curved.
WatchDots creator Jason Fournier told me the ideal size of WatchDots was determined after much prototyping and testing. The edge-to-edge design was tested for both buttons, but it left no gaps for applying films, making alignment difficult. “For this reason,” he said, “we deliberately chose a slightly smaller size to allow for human error.”
My WatchDots have been on my Apple Watch for about two weeks now and they look as good as new My watch didn’t peel off even after getting wet, and using the digital crown and side buttons didn’t affect them. Since this is a review, I have placed and removed several sets of watchdots and I can safely say that they will not harm your watch. You can peel them off with a fingernail, but like most vinyl stickers, they are not reusable.
I asked Fournier how the idea for WatchDots came about, and he told me that the idea came to the WatchDots team after noticing differences between the Apple Watch Sport and other Apple Watch models.
The digital crown on the Edition model is color-matched to the band. The digital crown is black on the stainless steel model. Apple has set a precedent that a color-matched crown is a desirable look, and our goal was to bring that to a lower-priced watch with a high-quality, inexpensive product.
Because they were designed to match the Apple Watch Sport, the WatchDots are available in a limited number of colors for now, but Fournier says new colors will arrive in the future. Orange, yellow and gold have been popular recommendations from customers, and the WatchDots team is also exploring different materials and textures.
My own suggestion was emoji watchdots, a request Fournier says the watchdots team is exploring as part of an expansion of graphics, icons and other custom designs, so at some point in the future, we might be able to decorate our Apple watches with them. Smileys, hearts and other small letters. Jony Ive probably wouldn’t approve, but the Apple Watch was designed to be personalized.
bottom line
Watchdots aren’t going to appeal to everyone, but I like the look of a digital crown that matches my band, and many sport watch users can agree. At $9.99, WatchDots are definitely pricey, but the most affordable way to add some flair to your watch.
How to buy
WatchDots can be purchased from the WatchDots website for $9.99. Each purchase includes three sets of Watchdots in your chosen color with a bonus random set.
Update 3/31/16: I removed the WatchDots from my Apple Watch after leaving them for a few months and there was a residue left. This didn’t happen the first few times I removed the watchdots, but I recommend using caution.
Note: MacRumors was not compensated for this review.
