Help & Support

CollegeWatch is made up of two apps: this iPhone app, where you pick a school, buy faces and complications, and save faces; and a small watch app that installs on your Apple Watch and carries your school's artwork and 25 complications onto the wrist. Separately, Apple has its own Watch app, where CollegeWatch faces and complications get assembled. CollegeWatch works with Apple's Watch app so you can put your favorite college watch face and complications onto your Apple Watch. So the loop is: choose here, save here, then open the Watch app to put it on a face. The Quick Start in Settings has buttons that open Apple's Watch app for you at the right step.

There are four ways to enjoy your school on your wrist, and you can start with the free one and move up whenever you like.

Free. Every school comes with four faces and three complications at no charge. You don't have to buy anything to put your school on your watch today.

A single face, $1.99. Pick any one face you love and it's yours to keep forever. It also unlocks the three Starter complications, the small live pieces like the kickoff countdown.

The Face Pack, $4.99. Every your school face, yours forever, plus twelve complications. If you like more than two faces, this is the better deal.

The School Pass, $19.99 a year. Everything: every face, all 25 complications, and live scores and stats on your wrist on gameday. New faces added during the season are included too. Each school has its own Pass, so if you follow two schools you'd buy one for each.

Prices show in your own currency in the Store, and every purchase is handled by Apple, so it appears on your Apple receipt like any other app purchase.

"Complication" is Apple's word for the small live tiles on an Apple Watch face, the ones that show the weather, your next meeting, or your step count. It's an odd word, but that's all it means: a little window on your watch face that shows something useful and updates by itself.

CollegeWatch gives you 25 of them for your school: the score during a game, a countdown to kickoff, your team's record and ranking, the weather at the stadium, your school's mark or rally cry, and more. They come in your school's colors, and they update on their own without you opening anything.

Complications live inside a watch face's slots, so you pick one of Apple's faces that has slots (Modular and Infograph are good ones) and choose which CollegeWatch complication goes in each one. The CollegeWatch faces you save from this app are photo faces, which Apple doesn't give slots, so most fans keep one of each on the watch and swipe between them. The next few questions walk through exactly how.

There are 25, and they fall into five families, so you can think of them by what they do for you rather than trying to remember all the names.

Brand. Your school on your wrist, no data needed: Team Mark, Rally Cry, In-Dial Wordmark, Full-Screen Crest, Wordmark, and Mascot. These are the ones to start with, because they look right every day of the year.

Countdown and schedule. How long until the next game and who it's against: Kickoff Countdown, Countdown Gauge, Days Since (the last loss, or the last title), Next Opponent, and the Gameday Card with kickoff time and channel.

Team stats. The numbers fans argue about: Record, Ranking, Conference Standing, Spread, SP+ Rating, ATS Cover Record, Last Result, the Matchup Card, and the Team Ticker, which rotates through several of these in one slot.

Gameday live. These only wake up during a game: Win Probability, the Corner Win Gauge, and Live Stats with the score, yards, and turnovers.

Stadium. Stadium Weather and Stadium UV Index, the conditions at your school's home field.

The Complications tab in this app shows every one of them with a picture, in your school's colors, and tells you which purchase unlocks it.

The guide Meet your 25 complications, in the Guides section above, shows every one of them drawn in your school's colors.

Any Apple Watch face that has empty slots for complications, and most of Apple's do. A few good ones to start with:

Modular has one wide slot across the middle and small round slots above and below. It's the easiest place to start.

Infograph has four corner slots and four round slots, so it holds the most at once.

Extra Large has one big slot, perfect for your school's crest filling the screen.

The one kind of face that can't take complications is a photo face, and that includes the CollegeWatch faces you save from this app: Apple lets those show a picture and the time, nothing more. So the usual setup is two faces on the watch: a your school face for the artwork, and an Apple face with your school complications, and you swipe between them.

You'll find Apple's faces in the Face Gallery inside Apple's Watch app on your iPhone. Add one, then follow the steps in "How do I see what one looks like before choosing it?" to fill its slots.

Each slot on a watch face has a shape, and each CollegeWatch complication is built for one or more shapes. When you tap a slot, the watch only offers the complications that fit it, so you can't choose wrong. But if you're planning a face, here's the map.

Wide slots (the rectangle in the middle of Modular) take the ones with more to say: Wordmark, Next Opponent, Gameday Card, Matchup Card, Live Stats, and the Team Ticker.

Round slots take the single-number tiles and marks: Team Mark, Mascot, Kickoff Countdown, Countdown Gauge, Days Since, Record, Ranking, Conference Standing, Spread, SP+ Rating, ATS Cover Record, Last Result, Win Probability, Stadium Weather, and Stadium UV Index.

Corner slots (Infograph) take Rally Cry and the Corner Win Gauge.

The Extra Large slot takes the Full-Screen Crest.

You'll see it on the face itself before you commit to it. Here's the whole process, and it happens on your iPhone, not on the watch.

Open Apple's Watch app on your iPhone. On the My Watch tab, tap the face you want to change. You'll see a picture of that face at the top of the screen with its slots outlined. Tap one of those slots and a list of apps appears. Scroll down to CollegeWatch and tap it, and you'll see a list of complication names.

Now tap any name. Look up at the picture of the face: it redraws with that complication in the slot, in your school's colors, exactly as it will look on your wrist. Tap a different name and it changes again. Try as many as you like; nothing is saved until you're done.

When you like what you see, tap Set as current Watch Face at the bottom, and it appears on your watch within a few seconds.

If you want to browse the complications with pictures before any of this, the Complications tab in this app shows every one.

This one depends on which watch face you put it on, and which slot, and it's Apple's design rather than a problem with your watch.

Rally Cry is your school's mark plus a cheer, like "Go Blue Devils®". Some slots have room for a line of text next to the mark, and there the cheer appears beside it: Infograph's four corners (the cheer curves along the edge) and Infograph's top round slot (the cheer curves above the mark, the in-dial wordmark). Other slots, like Modular's and Infograph's side and bottom round slots, don't have that text space, so the cheer moves inside the circle in small type underneath the mark.

If you'd like the cheer on its own with no mark, choose the text only version of Rally Cry from the list. And if you want the cheer big and readable, Infograph's corners are the best place for it.

The in-dial wordmark is your cheer curving above your mark inside the dial, the way "BAMA®" sits over Big Al in the picture on the A face before and after guide. It is the Rally Cry complication in one particular slot: Infograph's top round slot. Here's how to set it.

1. On your iPhone, open Apple's Watch app and tap your Infograph face (or add one from the Face Gallery).
2. Under Complications, tap Sub Dial Top.
3. Scroll to the CollegeWatch section. You won't see the words "Rally Cry" there; the list shows each cheer paired with a mark, one line per pairing, such as Bama® · Big Al or Roll Tide® · Script A.
4. Tap the pairing you want, then tap Set as current Watch Face (or just leave the screen; the change is saved).

On the watch, the cheer now curves above the mark in that top slot. The same pairing placed in the left, right or bottom round slot shows the mark with the cheer in small type beneath it, because only the top slot has room for the curve. To change the cheer or the mark later, tap Sub Dial Top again and pick a different pairing.

It is changing, just slowly, and that's on purpose. The Team Ticker shows five of your team's numbers in one slot: record, AP poll ranking, this week's point spread, ATS cover record, and SP+ rating. Rather than flashing between them, it turns to the next one every five minutes, so a full trip through all five takes about 25 minutes.

The little row of dots underneath the number tells you which of the five you're looking at. Apple doesn't let any watch face animate, so it will never scroll or flip while you watch. Glance again in a few minutes and it will have moved on.

Before a game starts, there are no live statistics to show, so the Live Stats tile shows the next game instead, under a small heading that reads LIVE STATS · AT KICKOFF. That heading is how you can tell it apart from the Next Opponent tile.

The moment your school's game kicks off, it switches over: the score, the quarter and clock, total yards, who has the ball, and turnovers, all updating through the game. When the game ends it goes back to showing the next one.

Live Stats is part of the School Pass, so it needs an active Pass for your school to show live numbers.

If you have a School Pass for your school, your watch gets live game information on gameday: the score, the quarter and time remaining, yards, who has possession, turnovers, and a win probability that moves with the score. All of it shows up in the Live Stats, Win Probability, and Corner Win Gauge complications without you opening anything.

Between games, those same tiles show your next kickoff. During the off-season they show last season's record. They never make numbers up: if there's no game and no line, they say so rather than guessing.

How current is it? During a game the face refreshes itself about every 5 to 8 minutes. That's a limit Apple puts on every watch face, not something we chose; it keeps the watch's battery honest. So a touchdown reaches the face a few minutes after it happens.

Want a real live update, no delay? Raise your wrist and open the CollegeWatch app on the watch (press the Digital Crown, tap CollegeWatch). The face refreshes the moment the app opens, and again each time you come back to it. Opening the app on your iPhone does not do this; only the app on the watch reaches the watch face.

A dash, or a tile that looks empty, means the watch doesn't have your school's information yet. That's normal on a brand-new install, and it fixes itself once the phone and watch talk.

Open CollegeWatch on your iPhone and give it a moment. It downloads your school's schedule and stats and sends them to the watch. Then open CollegeWatch on the watch once. Within a minute the tiles fill in.

Two other things to check: make sure your school is the school selected in this app (Settings ▸ Quick Start shows which school is active), and remember that during the off-season the tiles show the next scheduled game or last season's record, because there's nothing live to show.

When you tap a slot in Apple's Watch app and scroll the list of apps, CollegeWatch only appears if the CollegeWatch watch app is actually installed on your watch and has been opened at least once. Installing on your iPhone isn't enough by itself.

Here's the fix, in order. Open Apple's Watch app on your iPhone and scroll down the My Watch tab. If CollegeWatch is listed under Available Apps, tap Install next to it and wait a minute or two with the watch nearby. Then, on the watch, press the Digital Crown and open CollegeWatch once. Now go back and edit the face again; CollegeWatch will be in the list, sorted alphabetically by app name.

If it's still missing after all that, restart the watch by holding the side button and sliding to power off. That clears it up in the rare case where the watch hasn't noticed a new app yet.

It depends on what you've bought, and every level includes everything below it.

With just the free faces, you get three Starter complications. Buying any single face also unlocks those three. The Face Pack unlocks twelve. The School Pass unlocks all 25, including the live gameday ones.

The Complications tab in this app shows every one with a picture and which level unlocks it, so you can see exactly what each purchase adds.

Faces travel from this app to your watch through your iPhone's share menu, and it takes about a minute the first time.

In this app, find a face you like and tap Save to Watch. A menu slides up from the bottom of the screen. Scroll that menu down (this is the step people miss) until you see Create Watch Face, and tap it. Your iPhone shows the face with an Add button; tap it, and the face is sent to your watch and set as the current one.

If you don't see Create Watch Face in the menu, choose Save Image instead. Then open Apple's Watch app, go to Face Gallery, scroll to Photos, tap Add, and choose the picture you just saved.

The Quick Start in Settings has a button that starts this for you, and the first guide walks it through step by step with pictures of the menu.

Apple doesn't allow any other company to make a complete watch face, so CollegeWatch faces are a special kind of Apple face called a Photos face: our artwork on the bottom, Apple's clock on top. That's true for every app on the App Store, not just ours.

We design every face with that in mind. The clock area at the top is kept clear so the time is always crisp and readable, and the artwork is arranged around it. You can pick the clock's color in Apple's Watch app to match.

One more thing Apple decides: photo faces have no slots for complications. For those, add one of Apple's faces alongside, fill it with your school complications, and swipe between the two.

Yes, though it works a little differently. Apple doesn't allow anyone else to design an analog face with hands, so instead CollegeWatch dresses one of Apple's own analog faces in your school's colors.

Open Apple's Watch app, go to Face Gallery, and add one of Color, California, Metropolitan, or Simple. Set the dial color to your school's color. Then tap the slots and add CollegeWatch's In-Dial Wordmark, which curves your school's cheer around the dial with the mark in the center, and the Kickoff Countdown. You get real moving hands with your team all over the dial.

This almost always means the picture went to the watch a different way than we intended.

Use Save to Watch in this app rather than taking a screenshot of the face. A screenshot is a lower-quality copy and includes the phone's screen edges. The app saves each face at the exact size of your watch screen, so it lines up perfectly.

If you're adding the face through the Watch app's Photos option, don't zoom or crop the picture when it asks; just tap Add. The artwork is already the right shape.

That's by design: CollegeWatch shows one school at a time, and everything follows the school you've selected. Switch to a different school in the app and the Store, My Faces, the Complications tab, and the complications on your watch all change to that school. Switch back and they return.

The exception is faces you've already saved to your watch. Those are pictures, so they stay exactly as you saved them, whichever school is selected. If you'd like faces for the new school on the watch, save them the same way.

Your purchases for each school are kept separately and are always there when you switch back.

You'll see three kinds of button in the Store, and each one says what it does.

Buy appears under a single face. Tap it and that one face is yours forever, along with the three Starter complications.

Buy All appears on the Face Pack row and on faces that are only sold as part of the pack. Tap it and you get every your school face, forever, plus twelve complications.

Subscribe appears on the School Pass. Tap it to start a yearly subscription for your school: every face, all 25 complications, live scores and stats on gameday, and any new faces added during the season. It renews once a year until you cancel.

Whichever you tap, Apple shows its own confirmation with the price before anything is charged, and you confirm with Face ID or your passcode. Nothing is bought by accident.

Yes. Every school has its own School Pass, and you can hold as many as you like at the same time. A Duke Pass and an Alabama Pass, for example, both stay active together.

To buy a second one, switch the app to that school and tap Subscribe on its Pass. Settings ▸ School Pass lists all the schools where your Pass is active.

Every purchase in CollegeWatch is sold by Apple's App Store, and now and then the App Store can't offer an item at that moment. Usually it's a brief outage on Apple's side, or a brand-new item that's still being approved. It has nothing to do with your purchases, which are all safe.

Wait a few minutes and try again; a Retry banner appears at the top of the Store when this happens, and tapping it usually clears it. If a particular face stays unavailable for a whole day, email us and tell us which one, and we'll look into it.

First, give it a moment: after a purchase the app confirms it with Apple, which can take a few seconds, and the face flips to Owned on its own.

If it stays locked, open Settings in this app and tap Restore Purchases. That asks Apple for everything your Apple Account has bought and unlocks it. Then open CollegeWatch on the watch once so it catches up.

If that still doesn't do it, close CollegeWatch fully (swipe it away in the app switcher) and open it again; purchases are checked every time the app starts. And if you were charged but the item never unlocks, email us with the face name and we'll sort it out.

Subscriptions are managed by Apple, not inside this app, which means the cancel button lives in your iPhone's Settings.

Open Settings on your iPhone, tap your name at the top, tap Subscriptions, then tap CollegeWatch. You'll see each School Pass you hold; tap one and choose Cancel Subscription.

Cancelling doesn't take anything away right away. Everything the Pass unlocked stays unlocked until the end of the year you've already paid for; it simply won't renew after that.

Because every purchase is made through Apple, refunds go through Apple too, and we can't issue one ourselves.

Go to reportaproblem.apple.com in any browser, sign in with your Apple Account, find the CollegeWatch purchase, and choose Request a refund. Apple usually decides within a few days and emails you the result.

Yes. Your purchases belong to your Apple Account, not to any particular phone or watch, so they come with you.

On the new phone, sign in with the same Apple Account, install CollegeWatch, and open Settings ▸ Restore Purchases. Everything you've bought unlocks. Then open CollegeWatch on the new watch once and your complications come along too. Faces you'd saved to the old watch are pictures, so you'll save them again on the new one.

Installing CollegeWatch on your iPhone doesn't automatically put it on your watch. Apple's Watch app does that, and it needs one tap from you the first time.

Open Apple's Watch app on your iPhone and scroll down the My Watch tab. You'll find CollegeWatch under Available Apps. Tap Install next to it. It takes a minute or two; keep the watch close to the phone and unlocked. When it's done, CollegeWatch moves up to the Installed on Apple Watch list.

To have this happen by itself for every app in future, turn on General ▸ Automatic App Install in the Watch app. The first guide in Help walks through all of this with a button that opens the Watch app for you.

That message means the watch app is installed but hasn't yet heard from your iPhone which school you follow. The two need to be near each other and the phone app needs a moment to send it.

Open CollegeWatch on your iPhone and leave it on screen for a few seconds with the watch nearby. It sends your school and its artwork over Bluetooth. On the watch, the message changes to Syncing… and then Sync complete, and your faces appear. If it doesn't change within a minute, open CollegeWatch on the watch once; that nudges it along.

The watch only changes school when it hears from the phone, so it needs one quick sync after you switch.

Open CollegeWatch on your iPhone with the watch nearby, wait a few seconds, then open CollegeWatch on the watch. Its faces and complications switch to the new school.

Faces you've already saved to the watch are pictures and don't change on their own; save new ones for the new school whenever you'd like them.

Schedules, scores, rankings, and betting lines come from CollegeFootballData, a service that collects college football statistics from official sources. Stadium weather comes from Apple's own weather service for the stadium's location.

Season numbers like your record and ranking update a few times a day. Live scores update through the game for School Pass holders. If a number ever looks wrong to you, email us and tell us what you saw and when; we check the source and fix what we can.

No. Stadium Weather shows the conditions at your school's home stadium, wherever you happen to be. CollegeWatch never uses or asks for your location. It's there so you know what the team is playing in, whether you're in the stands or across the country.

No. There's no account to create, we never ask for your name or email, we don't use your location, and there are no ads.

The one thing the app shares is anonymous usage: which faces and complications get used across all fans, never who used them. It helps us decide which schools and designs to build next. If you'd rather not share even that, switch it off in Settings ▸ Share usage, and it stops on both your phone and your watch. The full details are on our privacy page, linked in Settings.

Email my2thumbz@gmail.com and a real person replies, usually within two business days and faster during the season. Tell us your school and what you were trying to do, and a screenshot helps if something looks wrong.

If you have an idea rather than a problem, such as a school we should add or a face you'd love to see, tap Suggest a school or face in Settings. Those go straight to us and genuinely shape what comes next.

Every school in CollegeWatch is officially licensed, which means each one's marks and colors are approved by the school before we can sell them. That takes time, and it's why the list grows in batches rather than all at once.

Tap Suggest a school or face in Settings and tell us yours. We count every request, and the schools fans ask for most are the ones we license next.