Your iPhone, Apple Watch, and different Apple-owned gadgets are getting an enormous overhaul very quickly. The very best half? You will not should pay a dime for them — all it’s important to do is replace your software program.
A number of new options are coming to WatchOS 26, and the seed 4 beta software program is now out there for builders, with a public beta rollout probably coming quickly. Reddit customers within the r/Apple Watch subreddit are already stepping into the newest replace and offering commentary on their most and least favourite options. The options contact every thing from Health to Messages, and embrace a serious design replace throughout Apple’s platforms for a extra unified look and naming mechanisms that mirror the 12 months the software program debuts.
Additionally: The best Apple Watch of 2025: Expert tested and reviewed
Along with WatchOS updates, Apple additionally launched AI characteristic developments, like Stay Translation and on-screen Visible Intelligence, like Maintain Help for telephone calls and Polls for Messages, and extra.
For these excited by making an attempt out the beta software program, WatchOS 26 is supported on the newest Apple Watches. House owners of those gadgets can obtain the OS, although it could have some bugs.
Listed below are the options we’re most excited to check out on WatchOS 26 as soon as the general public beta goes reside.
1. Liquid Glass design replace
Your Apple Watch interface, together with the remainder of your Apple gadgets, is getting the Liquid Glass design treatment. Apple’s “broadest design replace ever” introduces a fluid and clear across-platform show overhaul impressed by VisionOS’s visible interface.
Liquid Glass can mirror or refract no matter is behind or in entrance of it to create a clear, glassy look.
PCMag: I visited a secret brain implant company and got a glimpse of our cyborg future
This can change how your Sensible Stack, notifications, icons, and extra seem. Icons in your watch’s lock display or app web page will look clear as a substitute of their present opaque look, reflecting the sunshine in your wallpaper or on apps.
2. Apple Intelligence-infused Health
The following time you file a exercise on the Health app, you may have a private health coach ready for you. AI-powered Exercise Buddy makes use of your health knowledge historical past it has gathered by means of the app, to offer you real-time insights throughout your exercise.
Exercise Buddy quickly considers your health historical past, paces, Exercise Rings, Coaching Load, and extra to ship suggestions and encouragement forward of, throughout, and after your train. It’s out there in English for these exercise varieties: Out of doors and Indoor Run, Out of doors and Indoor Stroll, Out of doors Cycle, HIIT, and Purposeful and Conventional Energy Coaching.
It is about time Apple debuts an AI well being characteristic that comes with customized knowledge insights. Different wearables, like Oura and Whoop, have well being coaches or advisors that create stories or customise exercise suggestions based mostly on a person’s exercise ranges and behaviors. I am excited to check out this characteristic and see the way it compares to the competitors.
Additionally: I switched to the Apple Watch after a four-year hiatus – here’s why it’s near perfect now
Exercises are additionally getting a facelift with extra customizable exercise and race route options. The Exercise app has 4 new buttons for additional customization, together with Targets, Customized, Pacer, and Race Route. Apple Watch customers can moreover choose playlists or podcasts they often hearken to throughout exercises inside the Exercise app.
3. Sensible Stack enhancements
Sensible Stack’s prediction algorithm is enhancing. The algorithm now contains extra contextual knowledge, like sensor and routine knowledge, to trace at sure apps or functionalities. For instance, a touch for the Purposeful Energy Coaching exercise may pop up when you enter your gymnasium within the morning, or the Backtrack trace may pop up as soon as Apple Watch registers you are in a location with no mobile connectivity.
4. Notifications
Apple Watch Notifications are getting, fortunately, self-aware. As a substitute of loudly pinging you in silent environments — one thing that consistently occurs to me in my quiet workplace — the brand new characteristic interprets the ambient noise of your surroundings to regulate your notification quantity whereas delivering a textual content or app replace.
5. Stay Translation
Apple Intelligence brings Stay Translation to Messages in Apple Watch. The AI-powered characteristic interprets conversations to a person’s most well-liked language on their wrist.
Additionally: I was on the fence with the Apple Watch 10, but these 3 features changed my mind
The characteristic is on the market on Apple Watch Sequence 9, Sequence 10, and Extremely 2, and it presently helps English (US, UK), French (France), German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Spain), and Chinese language (simplified).
6. Messages
Apple Watch will use the context clues out of your Messages to counsel related actions, like sending a Verify-In when a person is on their method residence or an Apple Money pop-up when a pal sends you the dinner invoice. Apple additionally says that Sensible Replies are getting even smarter with its on-device language mannequin, which gives “exact” and “related” responses to conversations.
7. Wrist Flick
Transfer over Double Faucet. A brand new hand movement simply dropped for the Apple Watch. Wrist Flick is designed for dismissing notifications and calls, or silence pings. All a person has to do is flip their wrist.
8. Extra updates throughout the board
The Notes app arrives on Apple Watch. As does Maintain Help and Name Screening, two new iOS characteristic that notify person to return to a name on a telephone name maintain and display unknown numbers. Stay Hear, an accessibility characteristic for these deaf or exhausting of listening to, gives reside captions in your iPhone utilizing audio that Apple Watch screens.
Additionally: Every iPhone model you can update to iOS 26 (and which ones don’t support it)
The Watch acts as a distant management to begin or pause these conversations. Lastly, watch faces will probably be simpler to customise with a redesigned watch face gallery, and picture faces use customized content material to shuffle photos in your watch display.
Which Apple Watch fashions assist WatchOS 26?
You may want an iPhone 11 or later or iPhone SE along with following Apple Watches. Remember that some Apple Intelligence-powered options, like Stay Translation and Exercise Buddy, require one of many following iPhone fashions: all iPhone 16 fashions, iPhone 15 Professional, and iPhone 15 Max with Apple Intelligence enabled.
- Apple Watch Sequence 6
- Apple Watch Sequence 7
- Apple Watch Sequence 8
- Apple Watch Sequence 9
- Apple Watch Sequence 10
- Apple Watch Extremely
- Apple Watch Extremely 2
- Apple Watch SE (2nd technology)
