“It’s a solution for people to reduce their dependence on their phones.”
That’s what Australian developer Jonathon Lau told me in an interaction about building web experiences for the Apple Watch. We were discussing the Ant Browser, a freemium browser he made specifically for the Apple Watch. But why?
Well, for starters, Apple doesn’t offer a native web browser for its smartwatch. To access the web on an Apple Watch, you must tap on a web link that appears within an app, such as the Messages or Mail clients.
Alright, so Ant Browser is a solution to a visible gap, one that Apple is yet to address. Should you, though? That’s a million-dollar question and depends squarely on just how much you want to stay away from your phone. Remember the dumb phone trend, which has spawned a whole category of minimalist phones?
But there’s more to Ant Browser than meets the eye. It’s a full-fledged browser. It comes with a built-in reader mode with adjustable font sizes. It can display images without crushing them to death or destroying the layout of the web page.
“It displays more images than Apple’s built-in web browser and the competition,” Lau chimed in. It’s not a full-fledged replacement for the phone. Instead, Ant serves more like a stop-gap solution where the screen on your wrist can handle the quick fact search, score check, or recipe look-up.
There’s also a companion phone app where bookmarks from your wrist are arranged and synced. Now, the whole concept of web browsing on the Apple Watch sounds more like a formula for screen size frustrations and limitations than realistically solving a problem.
How is the experience?
I love it.
For me, Ant Browser solves a legitimate problem, and without too many functional frustrations. I read. A lot. And this browser helps me catch up on the news stories without breaking the reading experience. Oh, and did I tell you there’s a lovely reading mode that feels just like the one in Safari? Yeah, that too.
For quick access, I have set up my favorite websites as bookmarks, so that they appear right on the home screen and tap away from opening. It’s easier to add bookmarks on in the companion phone app, but you can add a fresh one while browsing a website on the watch itself.
There’s not much in terms of browsing controls, and that’s a smart move because of the screen space constraints. You get forward, back, refresh, reading mode, and bookmark as the core controls. That’s just about it.
On a thoughtful note, if you don’t want to lose a few hairs trying to type a name or sentence on the Apple Watch keyboard, you can do so directly in the mobile app. The phone’s keyboard launches automatically, and whatever you type syncs in real-time on the smartwatch’s screen.
As far as websites go, they open fine. If you disable JavaScript (there’s a dedicated option for that), it might help with viewing some of the webpage elements that might appear broken. Your mileage will vary depending on the kind of websites you visit.
In my case, the browsing experience was smooth. Pages looked straight and well formatted without any undue cropping, and images looked fine, too. A majority of news and sports websites I checked out regularly loaded without any issues, and across the entirety of the screen.
There are no jarring black lines or stuttering. You can choose to scroll up or down with your finger, or simply rotate the crown on the side. The only struggle was embedded videos. But then, you don’t really want to watch YouTube videos on a watch, do you?
There were some websites that loaded poorly, but these are mostly legacy pages that are either not maintained or have a shoddy backend. Across sports, news media, pop culture, and science outlets, I never came across a web page that didn’t work. On a few occasions, the images went blank, but a refresh fixed it. In a rare few cases, the pictures didn’t load at all.
For me, Ant browser exceeded my expectations with a minimalist yet polished experience that delivers what it set out to fix. Lau told me that his favorite part of using the Ant browser is checking his Gmail inbox. I wanted to try X, but refrained because it would beat the whole point of paying for a smartwatch browser, as I wanted to disengage myself from mindless web surfing on a phone’s screen.
Yeah, you have to pay for browsing on this one. You can use it for free, but the number of daily searches is limited. Thankfully, there’s no subscription system involved here. You can just pay a token $5 fee and enjoy unlimited browsing. It’s worth it, at least for my usage patterns.
Who is it for?
There is a subset of people who will definitely find some utility. As a journalist, Google Search and Chrome account for nearly 30% of my screen time activity for looking up news, followed by X for the same exercise. It’s not feasible for me to whip out my phone every now and then.
Part of me dreads the onslaught of notifications, and the risk of spiraling into a social media doomscrolling session is always there. I am wary of my screen obligations, and I have tried a handful of digital solutions to cut down on the harmful interactions.
As per a recent study courtesy of the University of Alberta and Georgetown University, cutting down on screen time can actually work better than antidepressants. The findings hinged on cutting down on internet access, which is enabled directly by the phone. What if the Apple Watch can intercept some of those internet yearnings?
This is the niche Ant browser is targeting, aside from the obvious convenience aspect. If you are grappling with the proverbial addiction or losing yourself after unlocking the phone, this app is worth giving a shot. From an accessibility perspective, the app lets you adjust the text size in reader mode, which is neat.
The app’s creator tells me that a text-speech system is on the horizon, and I’m looking forward to it. I installed the app on my Apple Watch with hopes of cutting down on my internet usage. Or to put it in more realistic terms, browse it on a small screen that is barely good enough for the “interstitial” internet search, rather than the full-blown internet browsing experience that needs a phone or a laptop.
I achieved the objective, even if it meant keeping the watch on my work table rather than perched atop my wrist, and the phone away from my sight. At the end of the day, it’s a winning formula.
