Everything you need to know about how the Apple Watch interface works

The Apple Watch interface is surprisingly complicated, especially when compared to what we're used to on iOS.

This interface has a pair of home screens - a watch face and an app list - hidden options, and multiple ways to interact with what's on screen. To help you put your finger on how it all works, we've prepared this cheat sheet.

We're going to be talking about "force tapping", which means to press the screen with more pressure than a normal tap. And the "digital crown", which is the ratcheting wheel on the side that acts as a wheel and a button.

The watch face is the first screen you'll see when you wake up the Apple Watch. And you do this simply by lifting up your arm. Drop your arm down to turn the watch off again.

From the watch face you can tap on bits of info to open the corresponding app. Hit the temperature gauge, for example, and you'll shoot to the weather app.

You can customise the face by force tapping on the screen when you're on the watch face. This takes you to a menu where you can choose a watch, select which modules are shown, and even change the colour of UI elements.

You interact with this menu by tapping on elements you wish to change, and then using the digital crown to cycle through different options. Press the digital crown or force tap again to finish.

Swipe up from the bottom of the screen while you're on the watch face to see glances. These are bitesize versions of the apps you use most often. Maybe it will show the top tweets from Twitter, or your activity rings.

You can swipe between glances with a finger, or tap on the screen to launch the full app. Swipe down from the top of the screen while in the glances menu to hide it.

Swipe down from the top of the screen while on the watch face to get a list of missed or ignored notifications. You can cycle through them with the digital crown, and launch the corresponding app by tapping on the notification.

You can dismiss notifications by swiping right to left, just like on your iPhone or iPad's Notification Center. Drag from the bottom to top to hide this menu.

To open the app homescreen, you press on the digital crown while on the watch face screen.

Here you can see all the apps you have available in a collection of bubbles. You can zoom in to make the bubbles bigger with the digital crown and pan around with a finger.

To load an app, just tap on it or zoom all the way in with the digital crown when the icon is in the centre of the screen. To close the app and return to this menu, hit the digital crown button.

To open Siri you can either press and hold the digital crown button or simply say "Hey Siri" while your Apple Watch is awake.

Every app is going to act differently. But most let you scroll through details with either the digital crown or the touch screen. And many will let you open a sub menu with additional options by force tapping against the screen.

To close an app you simply need to press the digital crown. If you press it twice quickly you'll bounce into your last closed app.

Finally, there are notifications. The only way to see these is to actually receive an email or a message or a tweet or one of the other million ways people can contact you in this dystopic universe.

You'll know when you get one because your watch taps you on the arm. Raise your wrist and the screen will show the notification. Now you can interact with it in various ways, lower your wrist to dismiss it, or press the digital crown to go to the watch screen.

Oh, and if you get a phone call you can mute it by putting your hand over your watch. Clever.