Widgets, and the beloved beagle Snoopy, are headed to your Apple Watch face.
At its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) today, Apple offered a first look at its upcoming watchOS 10 smartwatch operating system, slated to arrive as a free software update this fall. In addition to widgets and watch faces, the watchOS 10 update will deliver new mental health and vision health tools, as well as fresh cycling and compass features.
With watchOS 10, turning the digital crown from the watch face will reveal a new Smart Stack of widgets, offering useful information like the weather forecast and the day's latest headlines. Leveraging machine learning technology, the feature is meant to offer pertinent, time-sensitive information just when you need it, like upcoming calendar events, medication reminders, boarding passes, and more. The Smart Stack will also dynamically prioritize widgets for apps that you have running, like Podcasts, Stopwatch, or Workout, so they are easily accessible.
"This is a fast new way to view information from any watch face," Apple Vice President of Technology Kevin Lynch said on stage at WWDC.
New Apple Watch faces are pretty much a given with every watchOS update, and this year, users are getting two new ones: Palette and Snoopy.
Based on the Peanuts comic strip, the new Snoopy face puts the character and his sidekick Woodstock front and center on your Apple Watch, where they will "interact and play with the watch hands, react to the weather conditions in the area, or even get active when the user does a workout," Apple said. Meanwhile, Palette is an analog-style watch face that "depicts time in a wide variety of colors that shift as the time changes," Apple said.
On the health front, Apple is introducing a new watchOS 10 feature called Time in Daylight, which uses the ambient light sensor to measure the amount of time you spend outside. "Time outside in natural light can promote proper eye development in kids while everyone can benefit from its positive impacts on mood, sleep, and stress levels," Apple says, citing recommendations from the International Myopia Institute.
To encourage mental health, the Mindfulness app in watchOS 10 will let you log your emotions and moods so you can track them over time. The Health app in iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 will then offer insights about potential life factors such as sleep and exercise that could be contributing to your state of mind. The Health app will also offer depression and anxiety assessments to help you understand whether you should see a doctor for these conditions.
Another new health feature leverages the TrueDepth camera in the iPad and the iPhone to warn you if you're holding your device too close to your face (less than 12 inches) for too long, a risk factor of myopia (nearsightedness).
For increased safety during outdoor adventures, the Compass app in watchOS 10 will automatically generate two new Waypoints you may need to use in an emergency. The Last Cellular Connection Waypoint will mark where you last had cell service, and the Last Emergency Call Waypoint will show the nearest spot to any available carrier's network so you can ring 911.
As for new fitness features, starting a cycling workout on your Apple Watch will trigger a new full-screen Live Activity dashboard on your iPhone showing your real-time speed, distance, heart rate, and more. This should be useful for cyclists who have a phone mount on their bike handlebars.
In addition, watchOS 10 offers support for third-party Bluetooth-enabled cycling accessories, including power meters, speed sensors, and cadence sensors, enabling new metrics like cycling power, Apple said. With a connected power meter, your Apple Watch will estimate your Functional Threshold Power (FTP), a performance metric indicating the highest level of cycling intensity you could theoretically maintain for an hour.
Finally, Apple also introduced a new NameDrop feature that lets you swap contact information with someone by bringing your Apple Watch close to their iPhone. The company has also redesigned several key watch apps, including Activity, Home, Maps, Messages, Stocks, Weather, and World Clock to "utilize more of the Apple Watch display for more glanceable information," the company said.
WatchOS 10 will be available as a free software update for the Apple Watch Series 4 or later paired with an iPhone Xs or later, running iOS 17. The developer beta of watchOS 10 is available today, with a public beta slated to drop next month. Stay tuned for our hands on impressions of the upcoming software release.