watchOS 9 Starts Rolling Out For Apple Watch Users: New Features And More

Apple watchOS 9 was launched on Tuesday which brings new features and enhanced experiences to the Apple Watch Series.

With the new watchOS 9, Apple Watch users can get more watch faces to choose from. Image: Apple

Apple watchOS 9 was launched on Tuesday which brings new features and enhanced experiences to the Apple Watch Series. With the new watchOS 9, Apple Watch users can get more watch faces to choose from, with richer complications that provide more information and opportunity for personalisation. In the updated Workout app, advanced metrics, views, and training experiences inspired by high-performing athletes help users take their workouts to the next level.

The Sleep app now includes sleep stages, and for users diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AFib), the new FDA-cleared AFib History feature provides deeper insights into a user’s condition. The new Medications app makes it easy for users to conveniently and discreetly manage, understand, and track medications.

New watch faces on watchOS 9

With watchOS 9 comes four new faces: Lunar, which depicts the relationship between the Gregorian calendar and lunar calendar, used in many cultures such as Chinese, Hebrew, and Islamic; Playtime, a dynamic piece of art that’s unique to Apple Watch and created in collaboration with artist Joi Fulton; Metropolitan, a classic, type-driven watch face where the style changes as the Digital Crown is turned; and Astronomy, an original face that has been completely remastered and features a new star map and current cloud data.

The update brings enhanced and modernised complications to some of the most classic watch faces, such as Utility, Simple, and Activity Analog, along with background colour editing for Modular, Modular Compact, and X-Large for additional personalisation. The Portraits face showcases the depth effect on more photos, including cats, dogs, and landscapes, while Chinese scripts have been added as options for California and Typograph watch faces. For the first time, any Apple Watch user running watchOS 9 — even those without a Nike model — will be able to access all the Nike watch faces, including the fresh colours coming to the Bounce face.

Workout app updates

The Workout app, one of the most popular apps on Apple Watch, has been updated with watchOS 9, to provide richer metrics for measuring performance, as well as new training experiences to help users reach their fitness goals. The familiar in-session display now uses the Digital Crown to rotate between easy-to-read Workout Views, so users can see important metrics for different training styles.

Heart Rate Zones, utilising personalised Health data, can be used to monitor the intensity of a workout. For interval training, the Workout app introduces Custom Workouts, which can be used to create a structured workout that includes work and recovery intervals. New alerts, including pace, power, heart rate, and cadence, can be added to guide users throughout their workout.

In the Workout app, Heart Rate Zones can now be used to monitor the intensity of a workout.

For triathletes and duathletes, the Workout app now supports a new Multisport workout type that automatically switches between any sequence of swimming, biking, and running workouts, using motion sensors to recognise movement patterns. There is also a redesigned summary page in the Fitness app on iPhone that offers additional details with interactive charts for more precise analysis of all workouts.

Updates for runners

Apple Watch is already a powerful tool for runners, and watchOS 9 brings more data and features to help track how efficiently users run. New running form metrics, including Stride Length, Ground Contact Time, and Vertical Oscillation, can all be added as metrics on Workout Views. These metrics appear in the Fitness app summary and in the Health app, where users can see trends over time and learn from patterns.

A new Pacer experience lets users choose a distance and goal for the time in which they want to complete a run, and calculates the pace required to achieve the goal. During the workout, they can follow the pace alerts and metrics provided. Coming later this year, Race Route enables users to race against their best or last result on frequently completed routes, and receive in-session pacing guidance. A new Track running experience, coming later this year to the US, automatically detects that users are at a running track, and uses Apple Maps data along with GPS to provide the ultimate pace and distance metrics for runners.

Swimming enhancements

Kickboard has been added as a new stroke type for Pool Swim workouts, using sensor fusion on Apple Watch to automatically detect when users are swimming with a kickboard and classify the stroke type in the workout summary along with distance swam. Swimmers can now track their efficiency with a SWOLF score — a stroke count combined with the time, in seconds, it takes to swim one length of the pool. Users can view their SWOLF average for each set in the workout summary.

Redesigned compass app

A completely redesigned Compass app provides more in-depth information and new zoomable views, including a hybrid view that simultaneously shows both an analog compass dial and a digital view. Turning the Digital Crown reveals an additional view that includes latitude, longitude, elevation, and incline, as well as an orienteering view showing Compass Waypoints and Backtrack.

Backtrack uses GPS data to create a path showing where the user has been, which is useful if they get lost or disoriented and need help retracing their steps. It can also turn on automatically in the background when off the grid. Compass Waypoints are a quick and convenient way to mark a location or point of interest directly in the app. Tapping the Compass Waypoint icon drops a waypoint. Selecting one provides a targeted view of the direction of the waypoint and an approximation of how far away it is.

Sleep insights

The Sleep experience on Apple Watch already empowers users to create Wind Down and Bedtime schedules, as well as track their sleep to help them meet their goals. Sleep tracking in watchOS 9 provides even more insights with the introduction of sleep stages. Using signals from the accelerometer and heart rate sensor, Apple Watch can estimate when users are in REM, Core, or Deep sleep, and when they are awake. Users will see sleep stage data on Apple Watch in the Sleep app and can view more detailed information, like time asleep, alongside additional metrics, like heart rate and respiratory rate, in sleep comparison charts in the Health app on iPhone.

The machine learning models were trained and validated against the clinical gold standard, polysomnography, with one of the largest and most diverse populations ever studied for a wearable. As the science of sleep is still being explored, users in the US will be able to aid in potential discoveries by contributing their sleep stage data in the Apple Heart and Movement Study through the Research app.