Driver Watch
· v1.0.6
About
A minimalist driver's-watch dial for the wheel, the handlebar and inside-wrist wear: read time, altitude and sun position without turning your wrist.
Inspired by the classic driver's watch — dials built so you could read the time without taking your hands off the wheel — Driver Watch strips everything down to a minimalist, high-contrast layout that reads at a glance, not a twist. Big digital time up front, altitude and the next sunrise/sunset alongside it, and a solar compass rose in the corner, all sized and positioned to read instantly in your natural resting wrist position, whether that's on a handlebar, a pole, a wheel — or a rifle grip with the watch on the inside of your wrist.
The compass rose tracks the sun itself rather than a magnetometer: it calculates the sun's real position in the sky right now and marks it on the rose. Line up the real sun with the dot and the top of your watch points true north — no calibration, no arm-waving. While you are recording a GPS activity the rose also turns to your heading; the rest of the time it stays north-up, because watch faces cannot read the compass on their own.
The sunrise/sunset field auto-switches to whichever is next: RISE before dawn, SET during the day, back to RISE after dusk. Near the horizon the sun marker lingers a little rather than snapping off — it stays visible for a short while after sunset and appears a short while before sunrise, so it reads naturally instead of blinking on and off at an exact instant.
WHY THIS WATCH FACE ASKS FOR GPS LOCATION
It draws a solar compass and sunrise/sunset times, so it needs to know roughly where you are. It never switches the GPS on — it reads the position your watch already has from your last weather update or your last activity, and caches one coordinate pair on the device so the compass and the sunrise/sunset field keep working with no signal and no phone. It never sends your location anywhere: no internet access, no companion app, no server, no accounts, no analytics, no ads.
IF YOUR WATCH SHOWS "IQ!" AFTER INSTALLING OR UPDATING
That is the watch's own install step, not the face: on some firmware the watch tries to show the new face before the file has finished arriving. Open your watch's face list (hold MENU on the Instinct, Watch Face) and select Driver Watch again — it runs normally from then on.
Set which wrist you wear the watch on in the settings, and the dial adjusts so it reads naturally in your resting position.
INSIDE-WRIST WEAR
Plenty of people wear the watch on the inside of the wrist — shooters, military and law enforcement, climbers, anyone who wants the glass out of harm's way and the dial hidden. The diagonal layout reads the same way there: with your hand on a grip, a rope or a bar, the time faces you without rotating your forearm. No setting change is needed — keep "Worn on" set to the wrist you wear it on, left for left, and the dial lines up. For tactical use you get a pure black-and-white, non-reflective face with no glowing colour, and a solar compass that gives true north with no calibration.
Pure black & white, minimalist by design, built for the memory-in-pixel display. Compatible with Instinct 2, Instinct 2S, Instinct 2X, Instinct E 40 mm and 45 mm, Instinct 3 Solar 45 mm and 50 mm, and Descent G1.
FEATURES
• Minimalist, driver's-watch legibility — read at a glance, no wrist rotation needed
• Reads the same way worn inside the wrist — tactical, shooting and climbing carry with no setting change
• Oversized digital time, high-contrast for direct sunlight
• Live barometric altitude
• Auto-switching sunrise / sunset — always shows the next event, sun marker lingers naturally near the horizon
• Solar compass rose — calculated sun position, no magnetometer, no calibration; turns with your heading during GPS activities
• Location from your last weather update or GPS fix, with automatic fallback to the last known position
• Left/right wrist setting for a natural reading angle
• One face, works ac
What's new
1.0.6 — Altitude, sunrise/sunset and the sun marker now show from the first second, and a wrist change applies at once; the half-minute of placeholders after the face starts is gone. If your watch shows "IQ!" right after an install or update, select Driver Watch again from the watch face list — that is the watch's install step, and the face runs normally from then on.