At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, most of our attention is focused on the iPhone update, which steals the spotlight from all other updates, including the new Apple Watch update, watchOS 11, although Apple also paid great attention to it this year, as it announced a group of new features. Some of these features are small additions, but they will make a big difference in how you use the watch on a daily basis. As usual, most of these new features focus on health, sports and fitness, and aim to help you maintain a healthy and active lifestyle. This year is no exception. Below, we show you the five most exciting features coming to the Apple Watch.
A new application to measure vital signs to monitor your health
First, Apple added a new app on the Apple Watch called “Vitals” to monitor important health metrics in the body such as heart rate, breathing rate, wrist temperature, sleep duration, and blood oxygen levels, if the watch supports that.
If two of these vital signs are outside the normal range (pictured in the middle), the watch will prompt you to check your vital signs and provide you with a detailed report of these changes (pictured on the right).
Optimize your workouts with the “Training Load” feature
Another exciting feature is “Training Load”, which is especially useful for athletes or anyone who trains regularly, as it monitors the impact of exercise intensity and stress on the user’s body during workouts over the past seven days compared to the last 28 days.
It combines data such as heart rate, speed, and height with your height and weight to provide an estimate of training effort on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most difficult. Training intensity is classified into five categories: much lower, lower, constant, higher, and much higher. This helps them determine whether the current stress on their bodies is increasing, staying the same or decreasing, so they can adjust their training to get the best results.
There is also additional information in the fitness app on the iPhone explaining the potential impact on their fitness if they continue to train at this current level.
You can access the Training Load feature, either in the Vitals section of the Activity app on your watch or through the Fitness app on your iPhone.
Better support during pregnancy
For those women who are pregnant, the watchOS 11 update adds a valuable new feature to the Cycle Tracking app. They can record pregnancy symptoms, track physical and mental health, and view the stages of pregnancy.
In addition, the watch will encourage pregnant women to check notifications of high heart rate, which usually increases during pregnancy.
Pause activity loops
One of the exciting features in the watchOS 11 update is the ability to pause activity rings. Those constant reminders to close activity loops can be annoying, especially when the time or mood isn't right.
Previously, the only way to get relief from these reminders was to remove the watch, which could break your chain and cause you to lose your earned rewards. With the new update, you can pause activity rings for a day, a week, a month, or even for up to 90 days until you're ready to resume them.
Automatic nap detection
A new feature that should have been part of watchOS from the beginning is nap tracking. You can only track sleep data if you are in sleep mode or during your bedtime routine.
This feature will come in handy for recording the naps you take during the day. There is no longer a need to use a third-party sleep tracking app for this purpose.
Although Apple did not mention this feature, it was spotted in the beta version, so hopefully it will be available in the general release.
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