With the Apple Watch, you can quickly calculate from your wrist how much your friends should pay for dinner, and how much to tip. That is how it works.
Split bills and tip on Apple Watch
We’ve known the Calculator app from the iPhone for ages, but the app comes in handy in more places. For example on your Apple Watch. Apple is adding the calculator with watchOS 6. Although the small screen limits the calculator somewhat, it is easy to quickly calculate things without having to take your phone out of your pocket.
Unique to the Watch version of Calculator is a special ‘tipping function’. With this you can split bills to share the costs with friends, for example, but also immediately calculate how much percentage of tip you should give. Not only handy at home, but also in holiday countries where it is often customary to tip a certain percentage. So you can easily calculate exactly how much on your Apple Watch. You do that as follows.
- Go to the app overview by pressing the Digital Crown;
- Open the Calculator app;
- Enter the total amount of the bill;
- Tap on ‘Tip’ at the top right;
- By default there is a 5% tip. When ‘X% Tip’ glows green, turn the Digital Crown to calculate a higher or lower tip percentage;
- Then tap ‘People’ and turn the Digital Crown again to indicate how many people you want to share the bill with. This is set to 1 by default;
- At the bottom you see the total amount including tip, with underneath how much everyone has to pay per person;
- Press the cross in the top left to return to the Calculator main screen.
In addition to the tip button, there is another way to calculate certain percentages of an amount. You can replace the tipping function in the Calculator for a percent button. To bring it up, open Calculator and firmly press the screen.
Then a window will appear where you can choose between ‘Tipping function’ and ‘Percent’. If you tap on the latter, the ‘Tip’ button will be replaced by a percent icon to use during the calculation. To reverse the options again, you logically follow the same steps.
More about watchOS 6
Currently watchOS 6 is not yet available to the general public, but only as a developer beta. Apple will most likely roll out the update to all Apple Watch users in September, along with the release of iOS 13 and macOS Catalina.
In addition to the Calculator app, standard iOS apps such as Voice Memos and Audiobooks are also coming to the smartwatch. In addition, there will be a decibel meter on your Apple Watch that warns you if the sound in your environment can cause hearing damage. Check out our watchOS 6 preview to find out what else the update has in store.