Just got my first smartwatch, it’s an SE. One thing I like to do is read on AO3 before falling asleep, which I normally do on my phone, but sometimes wish the screen was smaller so there would be less light, even with a custom site skin that has black background and grey text. The Apple Watch screen with the scroll wheel and ability to adjust text size would be great for this, I think. I’ve seen there are a number of third-party web browsers for the watch in the App Store, but most can’t log in to sites, so I couldn’t use my skin. This isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker if any of them would have any kind of dark mode, even something like the iPhone’s Invert Colors which I used to use a lot because it was so convenient to have it set to flip back and forth by triple-clicking the home button.
So far I’ve downloaded Parrity (lets me log in on the iPhone app but doesn’t transfer to the watch) and μBrowser and tried the native browser too; for each of them, it’s a little clunky navigating to the page you want, but doable, and once you’re on the webpage it’s very readable. Back navigation would be a nice bonus, but mostly I just don’t want to be stuck with black text on white background. Several 3rd-party apps seem scammy based on reviews. iCab doesn’t, I might try that next, but .
I’m also sad iBooks won’t let me read on the watch either, and only does podcasts. Downloading ebooks or PDFs, if dark mode could be applied, would be a great alternative to reading straight from the webpage. It looks like an app called Wear Reader used to do this, but hasn’t been updated in 6 years and according to reviews, stopped working. An app called Reader for Watch on the other hand is very new and still has some kinks to be worked out.
Listening to an app that would read a webpage or ebook to me is probably an option that’s out there, but honestly I might as well just use my phone for that, it doesn’t meaningfully take advantage of the small screen the watch has to offer.
It’s possible I’m just missing a setting somewhere that would be helpful, so any advice is appreciated (though ‘just go to sleep’ advice might be appreciated less. :P)
