During the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2024), Apple introduced the latest updates to its software namely iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11. In addition, the company introduced its AI offering dubbed Apple Intelligence.
watchOS 11 brings with it a new Vitals app, a new way to customize your Activity rings and Smart Stack, and the Translate app on Apple Watch.
watchOS 11
New Vitals App
watchOS 11 introduces a new Vitals app that gives you a way to quickly view key health metrics and gain better context.
The Apple Watch analyzes metrics like heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, sleep duration, and blood oxygen and explores noteworthy metrics at a glance.
When two or more metrics are out of their typical range, you can receive a notification and a message detailing how the changes may be linked to other aspects of their life.
Vitals uses an algorithm developed using real-world data from Apple Heart and Movement Study.
A New Understanding of Training Load
The new watchOS version also comes with a training load, an insightful way to measure how the intensity and duration of workouts is impacting your body over time.
Training load helps understand the strain on your body from workouts over the last seven days compared to the last 28 days. These can help you make informed decisions about your training each day.
To measure intensity, a new effort rating will be available after each workout to track how difficult it was on a scale from 1 to 10. It will employ a new algorithm to automatically generating an estimated effort rating using a combination of data like age, height, weight, and workout data like GPS, heart rate, and elevation.
You can also manually adjust the estimate to take into account factors like stress or soreness.
Apple Watch will establish a 28-day training load, a weighted average taking into account both the effort rating and duration of your workouts.
More Customizable Activity Rings and Fitness App
watchOS 11 will also make Activity rings more customizable. Whether you’re planning a rest day during your training, have an injury, or just need a day off, you can now pause your rings for a day, week, month, or more without affecting your award streaks.
You can also customize your goals by the day of the week so you have the right amount of motivation at the right moments.
The Fitness app now also offers the ability to customize the Summary tab to see what exactly you want to see.
Smart Stack and Photos Face Personalization
Lastly, with watchOS 11, you can personalize your Apple Watch and make them more convenient.
The Smart Stack now has new widgets like Shazam, Photos, Distance, and more. It also can suggest widgets based on time, date, location, daily routines, and more.
The Photos watch face can also help you select your best photo options by quickly analyzing thousands of photos using machine learning. A custom algorithm will then find the best composition by optimizing the subject’s position within the frame.
You can also further personalize the face with time sizes, layouts, font choices, and more.
Ram found his love and appreciation for writing in 2015 having started in the gaming and esports sphere for GG Network. He would then transition to focus more on the world of tech which has also began his journey into learning more about this world. That said though, he still has the mentality of "as long as it works" for his personal gadgets.
