I Tried WatchOS 11 and These Are Some of My Favorite New Apple Watch Features [CNET]

The Apple Watch is getting some new tools in the fall with WatchOS 11, but you can preview the new Vitals app, Training Load and more in the public beta.

The Apple Watch is getting plenty of new tools for health, fitness and safety tracking with WatchOS 11. The new software is expected to be released this fall along with the next Apple Watch and rumored iPhone 16.

But if you don’t want to wait until then to try it out, the public beta version of WatchOS 11 is available to try now on any Apple Watch from the Series 6 and later, and the second-gen SE. Along with iOS 18, the public beta serves as a preview of these new features ahead of its general release this fall.

I installed the beta on the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and have been trying out new features like the Vitals app and Training Load for about a month. I already found some favorite features that you should explore.

To try out the WatchOS 11 public beta, you need to have iOS 18 on your iPhone paired to the Apple Watch. Features are subject to change between now and the final release, and I advise you to back up your Apple Watch and iPhone before installing. And know that you can’t revert back to WatchOS 10 or earlier versions if you do install the public beta.

Change your Activity Rings

In WatchOS 11 you can finally adjust your activity rings and take a rest day if you’re sick. In the Activity app, tap on the three rings and then tap pause rings. You can pause for the day, week or month, or you can set a custom target.

Another great new option is being able to change your goals for each ring: move, exercise and stand. If you know that a 30-minute exercise goal isn’t right for you, that can be adjusted up or down.

Individual days of the week can also be adjusted. Go to the calendar icon at the top right then press schedule and adjust accordingly. I know my Tuesdays are usually pretty low on workouts as I’m in the office, so I set that target to be lower, then up my weekend goals as I’m out and about a lot more.

The Vitals app tracks your health overnight

When you wear the Apple Watch to track sleep, it’s also recording other key metrics like heart rate, respiratory rate and wrist temperature. The Vitals app surfaces these metrics in the morning so you can see them on your wrist, rather than pulling out the Health app to dig into the menus. Use the screen or the crown to scroll through the metrics.

One helpful view is the past seven days view, which tells you if any of your vitals fall outside of your range of normal and highlights it in pink. You’ll also get notification on your wrist if two or more vitals are off.

Training Load helps you keep an eye on your workouts

Training Load is a way to measure the intensity of your workout routine, so you can keep on track if you’re working towards a marathon or the like, or want to avoid over-training.

Open the Activity app and find a new icon in the top right. Tap the chart symbol and the white line shows your 28-day weighted average of activity, with your past seven days compared against it. You can scroll the digital crown to go back through your last week’s workouts. They’ll be categorized as anything from “well above” to “well below” your average and each gets an effort rating.

Compatible cardio workouts like walks, runs, hikes and rowing will get an effort rating out of 10. The Apple Watch calculates this based on data like height, weight and age, plus calorimetry data from your workout like GPS and heart rate. 

You can adjust this effort rating if you think it doesn’t really reflect your workout. Say you’re overly tired from a late night and pushed to do a run, but it was slower than usual, you can change the effort rating to more accurately reflect how you felt. Tap the effort rating to bring up a chart and turn the crown to move the rating. 

A nice perk if you have an Apple Watch Ultra or Ultra 2 is that you can see your vitals and training load data on the Modular Ultra face by customizing the side bezel complication.

Check in with your Apple Watch for safety

There’s a new safety tool on the Apple Watch called Check In with WatchOS 11. It works both from the Workout app, and from the Messages app. Similar to how Check In functions in iOS 17, you open the Messages app and choose the plus icon to find Check In. Here you can adjust it to “check in” with a friend or family member based on a period of time, or when you arrive at a set destination.

During a workout, swipe right and tap Check In. It will automatically text your selected contact when you finish your workout. If the Apple Watch notices you’re not progressing as expected; your speed increases dramatically; or if your heart rate goes down close to your resting during an intense workout, it will prompt you to respond.

Otherwise it will share your location, with either limited or full data based on your selection, with your contact.

Once you start a Check In, this also starts a Live Activity on the watch that shows up in the Smart Stack. Like on iOS 17, Check In only works if your recipient is also running iOS 17 or later and it will not work for other contacts who aren’t using iMessage.

The redesigned Photos watch face

WatchOS 11 doesn’t have any new watch faces per se, but the Photos face gets more functionality. Pull out your iPhone and go into the Watch app, where you can choose people, pets, nature or city photos to highlight on your wrist.

In the background, your phone rates the best photos on composition and facial expressions to highlight what it thinks are the top images to show on your watch face. You can even go one step further and change the size and font of the time, plus background colors on your images to make the watch face more personal.

Remote app gets even more tools

I use the remote app on the Apple Watch more than I care to admit and it has even more controls in WatchOS 11. Open the Remote app then tap the three dots at the top right. Here you can mute and unmute your connected Apple TV, turn on captions or even power off your connected device with one tap.

Translate app

The translate app is now on the Apple Watch. Just speak your phrase and choose the target language, then the Apple Watch plays back the translation. In the settings you can change the speed to make playback slower or faster. Plus, you can download 20 different language packs so it will work even if you don’t have the paired iPhone with you.

A few of my other favorite features of WatchOS 11 include:

• Extra tools to help track pregnancy in the Health app.
• Live Activities now appear in the Smart Stack, like if you call a car or snooze an alarm.
• Offline mapping in Apple Maps now lets you get turn-by-turn navigation for hikes with voice guidance. 
• iMessage tapbacks have a different look, which is a nice subtle change.
• Double Tap now lets you navigate through any app — messages, weather or basically anything else — in two pinches.

Since you need to download iOS 18 to try out WatchOS 11, you might as well explore some of its new features, too. Check out our iOS 18 cheat sheet for features to try.