3 game-changing fitness features coming to Apple Watch this year

I’m a long-time Apple Watch and Apple Fitness user, with both serving as part of my daily routine. While Apple hasn’t announced a new smartwatch since the Apple Watch Series 9 last year (we expect to see Series 10 by September), the company did launch watchOS 11 at its WWDC 2024 this June. This latest OS update, which will officially arrive in the Fall, includes exciting features I can’t wait to use. Of the many new features in Apple watchOS 11, these are the ones I’m most looking forward to trying (some of which I have already begun testing in the developer beta).

1 Viewing patterns in the Vitals app

See cause and effect

Image via Apple

This new app doesn’t track anything the Apple Watch didn’t already track. But it groups data together in a logical way, in order to provide a better picture of your overall health and wellness. It takes into account your sleep quality and duration, heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, and blood oxygen, and plots them on an integrated graph. As you log day after day, you’ll see an at-a-glance view of this data on one screen, along with an indication if anything is out of your typical range. You’ll also receive a notification if two or more metrics are out of range, along with information about what might have caused this, like elevation changes, alcohol consumption, or illness. Why is this useful? You might notice over time, for example, that you get less sleep or worse quality sleep on the nights when you have a glass of wine with dinner, or that your heart rate rises at the end of every month when work deadlines are looming.

There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about this new feature, but it’s a thoughtful way to organize information. Most importantly, seeing all the data together can be motivating to encourage positive changes based on negative patterns. It might prompt you, for example, to get to bed at a certain time each night to avoid negative effects due to abnormal sleep ranges, or to avoid alcohol in the evening if it consistently increases your heart rate.

2 Pausing Activity Rings

Don’t let one off-day break your streak

Image via Apple

When you have an Apple Watch, it’s amazing how your day is centered around doing everything possible to close your Activity Rings. I have so many conversations within my fitness friend group about rest days or keeping up with streaks, and the struggles with managing both. The reality is that sometimes, life gets in the way, and you simply can’t meet a daily goal. You might need a rest day, have an injury, or be away on vacation or a business trip. Then what happens to that streak you worked so hard on? I have friends with streaks that have been going for literal years, never having missed a day for a run to meet the Move goal. It wasn’t easy to accomplish, as they would sometimes even drag themselves out for a short jog while sick with a cold just to make the Move goal. What if you didn’t feel so much pressure but could still maintain your streak?

You can maintain your achievements now, with customizable Activity Rings that let you pause for a day, week, month, or longer without affecting your streak. If you’re going to be on a business trip, have come down with a nasty case of the stomach flu, or threw out your back, you no longer need to worry that missing a workout day is going to break that streak. I love knowing that if I want to have a day with my feet up on the couch binge-watching a favorite show, or I am having bad back pain, I can just relax, hit pause, and pick back up again tomorrow without my streak being impacted.

3 Setting a Move goal schedule

Plan ahead for your variable week

Image via Apple

Along with pausing Activity Rings altogether, you can also adjust your Move goal schedule. I have friends who constantly change their Move goals from 450 calories to 400 calories or 350 calories based on their schedules from one week (or day) to the next. With this feature, you can set a schedule for goals that fits better with your habits so that you don’t have to constantly flip back and forth.

For example, maybe you work out Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and want to set 500 calories as the burn goal for those days, then 400 calories for Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays as rest days, plus 650 calories for Saturdays to factor in a morning run, chores, and other outdoor weekend activities. I’d love to challenge myself to burn more calories on the weekends when I have time to do a workout, morning walk, and regular weekend activities, but keep my calorie burn goal at the usual 450 during the week. With this feature, I’ll finally be able to do that.

There’s tremendous value in being able to adjust the Move goal schedule to match with your weekly schedule. Not everyone works out seven days a week. This prevents a feeling of guilt or losing your streak because you didn’t meet an ambitious goal on your rest day.

What else is coming to Apple Watch with watchOS 11?

While these three features are highlights for me, there are even more coming to Apple Watch via watchOS 11 which will contribute to making it one of the best smartwatches you can buy. It will offer a way for you to manually track your training load, factoring in effort and intensity to understand the strain on your body by comparison, once you have logged at least 28 days of data. There will be more support for pregnant women, including gestational age and symptom logging in Cycle Tracking. You’ll also be able to customize the summary tab in the Fitness app, enjoy new widgets for the Smart Stack (and receive suggested ones), get help selecting the best photos for personalized watch faces, access the Translate and Check In apps right from the Watch, use the double tap gesture across additional apps, and more.

If you’re adventurous, try the public beta of watchOS 11 this July (the developer beta is ready now), or download the new OS this fall once it’s officially launched. The watchOS 11 update works with Apple Watch Series 6 or newer, when paired with an iPhone XS or later running the new iOS 18.