Apple Watch: no apps for telling the time on our smartwatch, Apple says

Watch apps are banned, and there’s no option for creating new faces for the built-in one, so the ten Apple-created watchfaces are the only ones available

Apple CEO Tim Cook stood in front of the Mickey Mouse watchface, one of ten created by the company (AP)

Apple has banned watch apps from the Apple Watch, meaning that developers can’t create alternatives to the built in timekeeping software.

The rule has just been added to the App Store guidelines and says that any apps “whose primary function is telling time will be rejected”. The decision is thought to be an attempt to keep the Watch efficient, ensuring that battery levels and performance are not impacted.

The apps could have served as a workaround for the fact that Apple doesn’t allow third-party development of watch faces for the Apple Watch, meaning that users must select from one of the ten created by Apple themselves. Some have said that rule is similar to the way that Apple has not opened up the lock or home screen to developers, which other operating systems like Android Wear have done.

Third-party apps for the Apple Watch already run a little more slowly than the Apple-created ones, and so the decision not to let developers create new faces could be partly to stop any similar problems with ugly or badly-functioning apps.

But Apple is thought to be set to introduce more faces to its collection, with each update to the Apple Store operating system. “Check frequently for software updates; the set of watch faces that follows might differ from what you see on your Apple Watch,” Apple writes in its user guide.

The company does also allow for the customisation of the ten built-in Watch faces, letting users choose different "complications" that can show information like calendar appointments or the phases of the moon. Those can then be saved and then chosen from at any time.