With the Apple Watch Series 5, Apple finally brought a long-anticipated feature to its smartwatch: an always-on display. This means the Apple Watch Series 5's screen can still display watch faces and other information even when the screen isn't active, ensuring that your watch won't just turn into a black square on your wrist when not in use.
But the Series 5's always-on functionality is fairly limited. The current iteration of Apple's always-on feature only lets you see your current watch face, complications, and the workout app. While apps will stay open on your wrist, they're blurred out of focus and the time is displayed over them — likely a move to preserve privacy.
But I wish there was an option to select certain apps that could remain visible in always-on display mode, like the timer, for instance. You can view timers as a complication on the watch face in always-on mode, but that can sometimes make it more difficult to see the remaining time than viewing the timer in full-screen mode.
The watch's refresh rate slows down to 1Hz when in always-on mode to preserve battery, which is why timers don't refresh by the second in this state. But even having a full-screen timer that could refresh by the minute could be useful when setting timers for longer intervals, like 15 or 20-minute cooking timers, for example.