A new app for the Apple Watch will help you get a better overall view of your health and fitness levels. The new app is called Vitals and it was announced on Monday at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), along with other features coming to watchOS 11. The new app will synthesize data gathered as you sleep to give you a better understanding of your overall health. The app uses Apple Watch sensors along with data from the Apple Heart and Movement study to track changes over time and give you a heads up when things look outside their normal range.
The Cycle Tracking app can now give you insights during pregnancy. Showing the gestational age and health data as it relates to the duration of your pregnancy, such as a higher heart rate.
In addition to the new Vitals app, the Activity app is getting new abilities like Training Load that measures the intensity and duration of your workout to see how its impacting you over time. Using data like heart rate and pace, along with your personal details like age and weight, the app will determine a rating for each workout from one (easy) to ten (all out). In a post workout summary, you can see if you’re training above your average or below it.
Using your iPhone, you can set more personalization and customizations in the Activity app too. Now you can adjust your goals for the day of the week and set rest days while still hanging onto your streaks. The Workout app will now include a Check In button to let friends and family know when you’re heading out and back home safe from a run.
Other updates include more information on the Smart Stack, introduced last year which has a rolling list of active app widgets, such as Apple News, Weather, Calendar and Fitness that you access by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. Now instead of just active apps, the Smart Stack will include time sensitive widgets like precipitation alerts before it rains or the translate widget when traveling. Live Activities and Check In are also coming to the Smart Stack. Apple is also opening up access to the smart stack to third parties, with the example given of alerting you when your Uber is arriving.
If you like the Photos watch face, there’s good news here too. Machine learning models will now help you find the best photos to feature by identifying and scoring the images of your friends and family based on facial expressions and image composition. It can even automatically crop and frame it for you.
Almost as an afterthought, Apple also mentioned the advent of turn-by-turn directions for hiking and walking routes you created yourself.
Catch up here for all the news out of Apple’s WWDC 2024.
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