Sep 16, 2024 - Technology
Apple rolls out watchOS 11: New features and apps
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Photo: Courtesy of Apple
Apple on Monday released watchOS 11 for Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10 and Apple Watch Ultra 2, featuring new health features like sleep apnea notifications and fitness insights like Training Load.
The big picture: The latest operating system offers more personalization and ways to stay connected to yourself and your environment.
watchOS 11 supported devices
Compatible devices for the new watchOS include Apple Watch Series 6 and later, Apple Watch Ultra 1 or 2, and iPhone XS or later running iOS 18.
- To install the update, go to Watch > General > Software Update.
watchOS 11 features
Zoom in: The watchOS update brings new features to Apple's watches, including:
- A new way to detect sleep apnea, tracked by an Apple Watch metric called Breathing Disturbances. Users will be notified and can view their nightly Breathing Disturbances in the Health app, where they are classified as elevated or not elevated.
- A new Vitals app that tracks a user's health metrics like heart rate, respiratory rate and wrist temperature.
- When two or more metrics are out of their typical range, users can receive a notification, along with a message detailing how the changes in these specific metrics may be linked to other aspects of their life, such as elevation changes, alcohol consumption or even illness, according to Apple.
- The activity rings are now more customizable based on the user's goals and schedules. For example, if a user needs time off, they can pause their rings for a day, week, month or more.
- Training load is a new way to measure how the intensity and duration of workouts impact a user's body over time. With this comes an effort rating that is available after each workout to track how difficult it was on a scale from 1 to 10.
- The Translate app uses machine learning for speech recognition and can work automatically when you're traveling to a country with a language that's different from the language you use on your Apple Watch.
Go deeper: Apple Watches to go on sale without blood oxygen feature after court ruling
