The software that supports the Apple Watch is being upgraded. Apple announced WatchOS 9 at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, and it showed off new fitness features for runners, better sleep tracking, an app to track medication and new watch faces. These features will help Apple close the gap between its smartwatches and rival devices from the likes of Fitbit, Garmin and Oura, as it continues to make health and fitness its main selling point.
With WatchOS 9, the Apple Watch will get new metrics designed to help runners better understand their performance and reduce their risk of injury. These include vertical swing, stride length and ground contact time.
Heart rate zones will give you more insight into your workout intensity in WatchOS 9. New multisport workout options allow triathletes to easily switch between running, cycling and swimming tracking. Apple also added a custom workout option that allows for interval workouts that include rest.
The Apple Watch is already a well-rounded fitness tracker, but it lacks the more specific tools found on dedicated running watches. Even an entry-level Garmin watch like the Forerunner 55 has cadence reminders, pace guidance, and training plans. New features in WatchOS 9 will help the Apple Watch catch up in this area, possibly making it more appealing to runners.
Apple is also improving its sleep analytics by bringing Sleep Stages to its smartwatches. As the name suggests, sleep stages tell you how much time you spend in REM, core, and deep sleep, giving Apple Watch wearers a more complete picture of their sleep. Fitness trackers from Fitbit, Samsung and others have offered this feature for years, while Apple has been focusing only on sleep duration and breathing rate until this point.
But the Apple Watch is still missing a sleep-tracking tool that I’ve come to appreciate on other fitness trackers: Sleep Score. As the name suggests, this feature gives the wearer a score to assess sleep quality based on a variety of factors, often including exercise and heart rate data.
In addition to these new performance metrics and sleep tracking features, there are several other health and wellness improvements in WatchOS 9. Apple Watch will now be able to provide more context about atrial fibrillation through a new feature called AFib History, which tracks frequency and other heart disease-related trends.
WatchOS 9 also introduces a new Medicines app. The app is designed to make it easier to keep track of medications and set regular reminders to take specific medications and vitamins, even without an Apple Watch. You can add medications by scanning the label or entering the name manually. The app will also display information about drug interactions.
The update will bring four new watch faces and support for six new keyboard languages. The new watch faces are called Lunar, Playtime, Metropolitan and Astronomy. Other features include notifications that are less distracting when using the Apple Watch, new quick actions for answering a call or taking a photo with a pinch gesture, and a redesigned dock that prioritizes the app you’re currently using.
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