How to make an email visually appealing on Apple Watch
Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2024 8:17 am
We recently talked about how voice assistants are redefining email design to a certain extent. But what about smartwatches? Today we'll see how to make an email visible on Apple Watch.
Smart watches and other wearables have the ability to synchronize and therefore receive emails. The problem for the sender is that, a priori, watches can only display a few words of the received email. Specifically, the sender and part of the subject . In fact, this could be the reason why they are used more to determine whether or not the email is of interest and whether or not to delete it, and not so much to read the email in situ.
However, it is important to know that if we click to read it, the Apple Watch will only show us the plain text part of the email. Why is this happening? Because when the watch gmail email list detects a remote image in the email, it considers the HTML to be too complicated, so it displays the plain text version . So how can we display all the information we want?
First of all, we need to understand that emails usually have two parts: HTML (text/html) and plain text (text/plain). If we include an additional HTML part in the message, with the content type “text/watch-html”, the Apple Watch will use the “additional watch” part instead of the plain text part when the HTML part is not suitable. You may need the help of your ESP or email provider to configure the third-party Watch, but if you can do it, you will have an email that users will see correctly on desktop, mobile and Apple Watch.
Visually enhance your message
If you want your email to look more appealing on the Apple Watch, don’t use strong styles or tags to increase font weight — use <b> instead . Divs aren’t necessary, nor are most styles honored (with the exception of text colors other than black). Finally, be sure to avoid indentation or other organization in the HTML, since the “watch” format includes this extra space in the message.
How do I make the images look good?
This “watch” version of the email poses some issues regarding images. The watch changes the size of embedded images and inserts a 2px transparent border (4px on a retina display), causing the image to become distorted.
How do we solve it?
We will need to resize the images and make them 4px x 4px larger. This way, the Apple Watch will resize it back to the size we actually want.
If you want to experiment with embedded images, remember that you should only use them in the “watch HTML” part, since embedded images have little compatibility for displaying in the HTML part displayed in other email media.
Smart watches and other wearables have the ability to synchronize and therefore receive emails. The problem for the sender is that, a priori, watches can only display a few words of the received email. Specifically, the sender and part of the subject . In fact, this could be the reason why they are used more to determine whether or not the email is of interest and whether or not to delete it, and not so much to read the email in situ.
However, it is important to know that if we click to read it, the Apple Watch will only show us the plain text part of the email. Why is this happening? Because when the watch gmail email list detects a remote image in the email, it considers the HTML to be too complicated, so it displays the plain text version . So how can we display all the information we want?
First of all, we need to understand that emails usually have two parts: HTML (text/html) and plain text (text/plain). If we include an additional HTML part in the message, with the content type “text/watch-html”, the Apple Watch will use the “additional watch” part instead of the plain text part when the HTML part is not suitable. You may need the help of your ESP or email provider to configure the third-party Watch, but if you can do it, you will have an email that users will see correctly on desktop, mobile and Apple Watch.
Visually enhance your message
If you want your email to look more appealing on the Apple Watch, don’t use strong styles or tags to increase font weight — use <b> instead . Divs aren’t necessary, nor are most styles honored (with the exception of text colors other than black). Finally, be sure to avoid indentation or other organization in the HTML, since the “watch” format includes this extra space in the message.
How do I make the images look good?
This “watch” version of the email poses some issues regarding images. The watch changes the size of embedded images and inserts a 2px transparent border (4px on a retina display), causing the image to become distorted.
How do we solve it?
We will need to resize the images and make them 4px x 4px larger. This way, the Apple Watch will resize it back to the size we actually want.
If you want to experiment with embedded images, remember that you should only use them in the “watch HTML” part, since embedded images have little compatibility for displaying in the HTML part displayed in other email media.