watchOS 26 delivers more personalized ways to stay active, healthy, and connected
Apple today previewed watchOS 26, offering a beautiful new
look and even more intelligence for a more personalized experience, to support
users in staying active, healthy, and connected. A new design with Liquid Glass
makes features like the Smart Stack, Control Center, the Photos watch face, and
in-app navigation and controls more expressive, while maintaining the instant
familiarity of watchOS. Apple Intelligence enhances the fitness experience with
Workout Buddy, which provides personalized, spoken motivation. The Workout app
features a new layout, and offers music to listen to based on a user’s tastes
and the workout type. watchOS 26 makes everyday interactions even more
convenient with Smart Stack hints and updates to Messages, and introduces a new
one-handed wrist flick gesture to easily dismiss notifications.
“Apple Watch is an indispensable companion for millions of
people around the world, and watchOS 26 uses intelligence to offer an even more
personalized experience,” said David Clark, Apple’s senior director of watchOS
Engineering. “From a gorgeous new design, to Workout Buddy with Apple
Intelligence, personalized music suggestions in the Workout app, and more
intelligence in the Smart Stack and Messages, we’re excited about the many ways
watchOS 26 will support each user in staying active, healthy, connected, and
safe throughout their day.”
A Beautiful New Design
A gorgeous new software design with Liquid Glass brings a
fresh look to watchOS 26. Across apps, this new design enables a vibrant and
expressive experience that reflects and refracts content using real-time
rendering, which brings even more focus to content and makes using Apple Watch
even more delightful. Smart Stack widgets, Smart Stack hints, notifications,
Control Center, and in-app controls and navigation will adopt the new design.
The popular Photos watch face is enhanced with numerals made of Liquid Glass,
allowing users to see even more of their photo.
Apple Intelligence Comes to Fitness with Workout Buddy
Workout Buddy is a first-of-its-kind fitness experience with
Apple Intelligence that incorporates a user’s workout data and their fitness
history to generate personalized, motivational insights during their session,
based on data like heart rate, pace, distance, Activity rings, personal fitness
milestones, and more.
For example, as a user starts a run, Workout Buddy will give
a personalized pep talk that may remind them of their running mileage for the
week so far, or share how they are doing against their Activity ring goals:
“Way to get out for your run this Wednesday morning. You’re 18 minutes away
from closing your Exercise ring. So far this week, you’ve run 6 miles. You’re
going to add to that today.”
During the workout, Workout Buddy can mark key moments like
their mile splits, or tell them if they hit a new milestone based on their
fitness history: “Mile four. You picked up the pace and ran that last one in 8
minutes and 28 seconds.” “Hey, check this out. Your total running distance for
the year just crossed the 200-mile mark! That’s a lot of running!”
When a user ends a workout, Workout Buddy will recap their
workout stats and congratulate them on their achievements: “Way to get your
workout in! You went 4.3 miles in just over 38 minutes. Your average pace was 8
minutes and 58 seconds, and your average heart rate was 128. That was your
longest run of the last 28 days. What will you do next?”
To offer meaningful inspiration in real time, Workout Buddy
analyzes data privately and securely, with Apple Intelligence. A new
text-to-speech model then translates insights into a dynamic generative voice
built using voice data from Fitness+ trainers, so it has the right energy,
style, and tone for a workout.
Workout Buddy will be available on Apple Watch with
Bluetooth headphones, and requires an Apple Intelligence-supported iPhone
nearby. It will be available starting in English, across some of the most
popular workout types: Outdoor and Indoor Run, Outdoor and Indoor Walk, Outdoor
Cycle, HIIT, and Functional and Traditional Strength Training.
Additional Updates to the Workout Experience
The Workout app is one of the most popular apps on Apple
Watch, and in watchOS 26, it debuts the biggest update to its layout and
navigation since its introduction. Four new buttons in the corners of the app
make it easier for users to access their favorite features to customize
workouts, like Workout Views, Custom Workout, Pacer, Race Route, and more.
To add inspiration, users can set up music and podcasts
right in the Workout app to automatically play when they start a workout. For
users’ convenience, Apple Music can now select the best playlist for a user’s
workout based on the workout type and their personal tastes.1 Alternatively,
users can see suggestions for playlists or podcasts based on what they’ve
recently listened to during that particular workout type.
The Smart Stack Becomes Even More Proactive
The Smart Stack is designed to help users quickly access
important information from any watch face. In watchOS 26, the Smart Stack
improves its prediction algorithms by incorporating more contextual data,
sensor data, and data from a user’s routine to provide Smart Stack hints, a
proactive prompt for actionable suggestions that are immediately useful. Made
of Liquid Glass, Smart Stack hints will appear on the display as a gentle
visual prompt. For example, a hint for Backtrack may appear when a user is in a
remote location with no connectivity, or a hint for a Pilates workout may show
up when a user arrives at a studio location at their usual time.
Added Convenience in Messages
Apple Watch now supports Live Translation in Messages with
Apple Intelligence, allowing incoming texts to be automatically translated into
a user’s preferred language, right on their wrist.2 And when
the user responds, their texts can be instantly translated for the person
they’re having a conversation with. Live Translation will be available on Apple
Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2, with an Apple
Intelligence-supported iPhone.
Additionally, for users whose device language is set to
English, Apple Watch will intelligently suggest relevant actions in Messages
using the context of a conversation, like starting a Check In when a friend
asks a user to share when they arrive home. Customizable Backgrounds set on
iPhone will also appear on Apple Watch to make conversations feel more personal
and distinct, and users can respond to polls right on their wrist. Smart
Replies get even more precise for users whose device language is set to English,
with an improved on-device language model that can generate relevant responses
based on the content of a conversation.3
Notifications Are Easier to Manage
Notifications are even easier to manage with a simple wrist
flick gesture on Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch
Ultra 2. When a user raises their wrist to check a notification but isn’t ready
to respond, they can quickly turn their wrist over and back to dismiss the
notification. The wrist flick gesture can be used to dismiss notifications and
incoming calls, silence timers and alarms, and return to the watch face. It
uses the accelerometer and the gyroscope — along with a machine learning model
— to analyze a user’s wrist movement. Wrist flick joins the double tap gesture
to allow users to do even more on Apple Watch with only one hand, for times
when the user’s other hand is occupied, such as when walking the dog, cooking,
or holding a cup of coffee.
Apple Watch can also now automatically adjust the speaker
volume based on the ambient noise in a user’s surroundings for notifications,
timers, alarms, incoming calls, and Siri, allowing them to stay connected
without worrying about disturbing those around them.
Additional updates in watchOS 26:
- The Notes
app comes to Apple Watch, allowing users to access their notes right
on their wrist. Users can also pin and unlock notes, complete checklist
items, and create new notes with Siri, dictation, and the keyboard.
- Hold
Assist and Call Screening come to the Phone app,
when an iPhone is nearby. When a user is waiting for a live agent, Hold
Assist recognizes once a live agent is available and notifies the user to
return to the call.4 Call Screening helps users manage
incoming phone calls from unknown numbers more efficiently by collecting a
name and reason for the call before their phone rings, so they can make an
informed decision on whether to pick up, decline the call, or ask for more
information.5
- For
users who are deaf or hard of hearing, Live Listen controls
come to Apple Watch with a new set of features, including real-time Live
Captions of what their iPhone hears on a paired Apple Watch while
listening to the audio.6Apple Watch serves as a remote control
to start or stop Live Listen sessions on a paired iPhone, or jump back
into a session to capture something that may have been missed.
- The Photos
face will now shuffle images based on Featured content from
Photos, so users can see images of their most meaningful moments every
time they raise their wrist or tap the display.
- Users
can now explore and discover watch faces more easily with the
redesigned watch face gallery on Apple Watch and in the
Watch app on iPhone, with faces grouped into collections.
New Tools for Developers
Developers are able to take advantage of new APIs in watchOS
26 across design, the Smart Stack, and more. Developers can use new SwiftUI
APIs to adopt the beautiful new design materials of watchOS 26. With the
Control Widget API, developers can create custom controls to be added to the
Control Center, Action Button, or Smart Stack widget, and the Smart Stack
Relevance API allows third-party widgets to be added to the Smart Stack with
new signals like Points of Interest, with user permission to incorporate location
data. For example, the Smart Stack can intelligently show a widget for Slopes
when users arrive at a ski resort with improved location APIs, and now Dark
Noise can add a custom control to Control Center so users can easily turn on a
sleep soundscape without picking up their iPhone.
