I’ve been wearing an Apple Watch pretty regularly for nearly a decade at this point (October 2015), and have picked up a few bands over time that I swap between. Commonly I’ll swap from a fabric based band to a rubber/silicone based band when doing DIY or sports as they seem to stand up better over time to those activities.

Without fail every single time I swap the band I have to think really hard which way round the new band is going onto the watch body. For the fabric loops is it the single end or the hooped end going on the top of the body? For the two piece bands is it the short or the long band that goes on the top of the body?

I finally figured out a mnemonic to help me remember, and having used it for a few weeks it appears to have lodged in my brain. Pretty simple, it’s a single word:

Longbottom.

For the two piece straps the longer one goes on the bottom (and shorter on the top), and for the fabric loops the hoop goes on the bottom because it has the longer piece of the strap running through it. (The latter is more tenuous.)

To remember longbottom specifically, the first reference that comes to my mind is Neville Longbottom, who went from being a weed to being pretty awesome in a well known series of books¹ and films. Secondly it’s a place in Middle-Earth, where Pipe-weed was first grown.