watchOS 8: The MacStories Review

We’ve come a long way from the Wild West of watchOS’ early versions. Changes in recent years have been thoroughly iterative in nature, suggesting that Apple believes that the platform has reached maturity. watchOS 8 heralds no deviation from this path, but as usual, a host of features bring new minor excitements for us to explore.

Health and fitness are established pinnacles of any good watchOS update, and this year’s offerings include a new Mindfulness app, sleep tracking improvements, and expanded workout types. Since Complications can now communicate with Bluetooth devices, health and fitness data from Bluetooth accessories will be more accessible than ever.

The usual host of first-party app updates are back this year too, with Home and Timers getting the most interesting changes. As for watch faces — another common source of easy feature additions — Apple seems to have dropped that ball this time around. Only two new faces are joining the ranks, and existing faces have remained stagnant.

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Pillow

Pillow: Sleeping better, made simple.

At the system level, text input has received some nice updates. While still a bit clunky, some of the strictest limitations have been lifted, making the Apple Watch useable in more situations where I would previously have never considered it. The always-on display in Apple Watch Series 5 and higher will be far more useful in watchOS 8 as well, as third-party apps are finally able to utilize it.

Despite a lot of tidbits scattered throughout, watchOS 8 is easily the smallest annual update in the Apple Watch’s short history. This shouldn’t be a surprise given that we’re in the second year of a global pandemic, but it still feels disappointing.

Hopefully next year Apple will devote a bit more time and effort to watchOS, but for now let’s dig into the new additions that we do have to explore. Despite the small size of watchOS 8, its features are all positive improvements, and it’s still the best iteration of the Apple Watch operating system to date.

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Health and Fitness

As we soldier on through our second pandemic year, maintaining mental health is more important than ever. With watchOS 8, Apple is looking to help us out in this department. The Breathe app has been renamed to “Mindfulness,” and now includes a new “Reflect” feature alongside Breathe.

Mindfulness and Reflect

Reflect prompt and mesmerizing meditation glob pattern.

Reflect is a meditation practice. When you start a new Reflect session watchOS will show you a random prompt, such as: “Recall a time when you learned a new way of doing something and what it felt like to think in a new way.” Once you press begin, you’ll spend a minute meditating on the contents of your prompt. As you meditate, the Mindfulness app shows a peaceful and somewhat mesmerizing pattern of floating globs, which slowly morph and change colors over time. When your minute has elapsed, you’ll get a summary view with your total time spent reflecting, your average heart rate over this time, and the number of “Mindful Minutes” that you’ve spent using this feature during the course of the day.

I’m not much of a meditator myself, but I gave this feature the ol’ college try. I didn’t find it particularly for me, but I can confirm that the floating globs are entrancing. Some of the prompts are simple — along the lines of “just sit and try not to feel like you need to do anything.” Others are more intricate, like thinking of a lesson you once learned and trying to apply it to your life today.

One thing I realized pretty quickly when trying Reflect was that one minute really didn’t feel like enough time to get the job done. A minute is the same default amount of time as the Breathe feature uses, and I think it works well there for people new to breathing exercises. Meditation, though, is harder to adjust to than simply breathing. As someone who hadn’t practiced meditation before, I am not skilled at quieting my mind on command. With only a minute to do so, I felt stressed about the timeframe, which was counterproductive.

Thankfully, the duration is easily adjustable from the main screen of the Mindfulness app. Just tap the ‘…’ button in the top-right corner of the Reflect button, and then set your desired reflection time between one and five minutes. I switched to three minutes, and definitely felt like I was able to get a bit more out of my Reflect sessions. It’s still not quite my jam, but I definitely see the potential benefits, and I recommend anyone reading this to at least give it a try. Increase the duration too, and see if your brain enjoys some (probably much-needed) down time.

On the other side of the Mindfulness app, Breathe is effectively unchanged. There are all-new animations for breathing in and out though, and they’re also fun and relaxing to look at while taking time out of your day to breathe.

Sleeping Respiratory Rate

Apple introduced sleep tracking to the Apple Watch last year. It’s a great feature addition, although I had some quibbles with the implementation. Mainly, I didn’t appreciate how much it wanted to be structured around a set sleep schedule. As someone whose job has no set hours, my sleep schedule is somewhat erratic. While I’m interested in sleep tracking, I didn’t feel like the first-party sleep tracking system was set up to cater to my needs.

Unfortunately, watchOS 8 hasn’t changed the basic implementation of this system at all. While there are some workarounds that I hadn’t noticed last year — such as pressing the Do Not Disturb button in Control Center to manually enable/disable Sleep mode — there’s still no way to have the Apple Watch just automatically figure out when you’re asleep and track it.

As I mentioned in my watchOS 7 review, third-party apps have been able to accomplish this task for quite some time, so it certainly isn’t outside the realm of possibility. Alas, another year has gone by and Apple has not added automatic sleep tracking support.

With the above said, if you are someone who uses Apple’s first-party sleep tracking system, then there’s one new feature for you to enjoy. watchOS can now track your sleeping respiratory rate (your number of breaths per minute) throughout each night of sleep. This task is accomplished using the Apple Watch’s accelerometer, meaning it should work for all Apple Watch models that support watchOS 8. No particular hardware required. You can view your respiratory rate over time in the Health app on your iPhone, along with all of your other tracked sleeping trends.

Workouts

New Pilates and Tai Chi workouts.

As we’ve come to expect in new watchOS updates, watchOS 8 has introduced some new types of workouts in the Workouts app. New built-in workouts are interesting because they generally entail special algorithms for tracking the particular movements associated with them. In this case, Apple is introducing fine-grained tracking of Tai Chi and Pilates workouts. If you do either of these, then you’ll be able to take advantage of more accurate metrics during your workouts.

In the case of Pilates, Apple’s Fitness+ service is also introducing new guided workouts with Pilates instructors. Pilates enthusiasts can take advantage of these starting September 27th.

According to Apple, they’re also adding special fall detection for various workouts (including cycling workouts) to watchOS. These features haven’t shipped yet though. On Apple’s watchOS 8 marketing page they’re marked as “coming soon.”

Watch Faces

The new interface for creating watch faces in watchOS 8.

In watchOS 8, Apple has taken another shot at reworking the watch face creation view on the Apple Watch. It begins as usual: tap and hold on your watch face to get to the selection screen, then swipe all the way to the far-right side of the list until you reach the ‘New’ button. Press that to see the new face selection view.

The selection view shows a special “New Watch Faces” section at the very top. Below this section, types of watch faces with multiple options can now be grouped together.

The above feels like a nice change, except that it also seems entirely unfinished. The only actually grouped set of watch faces are the Pride series. Others that would logically be grouped together — like Activity Analog/Digital and Numerals Mono/Duo — are still separate entries. I’m not sure why these haven’t been joined together, because the growing list of watch faces is more manageable in groups than in one giant list.

The only other grouped section is the ‘New Watch Faces’ section, which contains the most recent watch face additions. In a world where Apple continues to not allow third-party developers to create watch faces, it has now dwindled to creating only two new watch faces on its own in an entire year. One of these — the Portraits face — can’t even be created from your Watch.

Presumably when the Apple Watch Series 7 ships later this fall, Series 7 users will see the new “Dynamic Contour” watch face in this section, as well as the lightly updated Modular face. Neither of these faces is shipping with the current version of watchOS 8 though, and both will require the Series 7 watch to use.

Despite the overall state of watch faces feeling increasingly lethargic, let’s take a look at the new faces.

Portraits Face

With Portraits, Apple wants to utilize the depth layering effect from iPhone Portrait mode photos on the Apple Watch. When you create a Portraits watch face, you pick a selection of Portrait mode photos, and the Apple Watch “intelligently” separates out the layers and displays the photo in a way that it thinks is optimal. Based on Apple’s marketing images, the watch face is supposed to layer the subject of the image slightly on top of the actual time numerals. You can then scroll the Digital Crown to zoom the face in, causing it to creep even further on top of the time. The subject of the image zooms faster than the background, making them appear to leap out of the bounds of the image.

Unfortunately, the cool layering effect often doesn’t work by default. I threw over 25 photos at this watch face, some brand new off of my iPhone 12 Mini’s Portrait mode camera, and some older from throughout the last several years of Portrait photos that I had on my iPhone. Only two of these photos successfully created the depth effect where the subject was shown on top of the numerals.

Both of the functional photos were taken in 2017 using my original iPhone X. At first I thought it might have something to do with the iPhone Mini’s camera, but other photos from my iPhone X did not work, nor did any of the photos from my year with an iPhone 11 Pro. The problem seems to be with the way the Portraits face tries to crop the images. Using photos with lots of headroom definitely helps, but I found examples where this still didn’t work either. When it does work though, the effect is pretty cool.

It seems slingshots and grandparents are the keys to successful depth layering — at least by default.

The Portraits watch face can only be created from the Watch app on your iPhone. I discovered this after spending an embarrassingly long amount of time tapping on the face in the New Watch Face section on my Apple Watch. Tapping it there does absolutely nothing — you’re just supposed to read the fine print beneath it which informs you that you can only create this face on your iPhone.

Assuming you know that “on your iPhone” means “from the Watch app on your iPhone,” you’ll probably open the Watch app and tap the ‘Edit’ button in the “My Faces” section. Unfortunately, you can’t add faces by editing your faces. You need to back out of that section and instead go to the ‘Face Gallery’ tab at the bottom. Then you can finally add a Portraits face.

Portraits faces accept up to 24 photos at a time. You choose these photos from the Watch app, and they then sync to the watch face on your Apple Watch. If you want to change the photos on this face after you’ve created it, you’ll need to tap into it from the My Faces section in the Watch app rather than going back to the Face Gallery. This whole face creation and editing process is overcomplicated. There’s just no reason that the Watch app should be required to create a new watch face in watchOS 8.

Adding to the frustration is that the Portraits face actually has a pretty advanced editing interface, but it’s ridiculously hidden. It allows you to zoom photos in and out to adjust the depth effect and positioning of each one, which is exactly what this watch face needs. Here are a few examples of the Portrait face’s bad default layouts:

The Portraits watch face displays the time in one of two places: either at the very top, or in the lower third — right above the complication. Presumably it’s trying to intelligently avoid covering up an important part of the photo. As you can see from these examples though, it sometimes decides to stick the time right on top of your subject’s face, even when there’s more than enough room at the top of the image for the time to fit unencumbered. These failure examples occurred in the first set of 25 photos that I tried with this watch face — this is not the result of me trying tons of different photos until I managed to find some that were wonky.

I include the photo of the dog here to show the most abject failure where the watch face just entirely missed the photo’s subject. I understand that Portrait mode is meant for humans and not animals, so this is a slightly unfair comparison in that regard, but I still think it’s foolish. Even if the face can’t find a human subject, the Portrait photo is still blurred correctly, and thus the depth data should make it clear that the object in the foreground is the primary focus of the image. But nope, the dog is still shoved off to the side.

Thankfully, there’s a solution to most of these problems. From the Watch app for iOS, when you are selecting photos to add to the Portraits watch face, each photo is actually a secret button. Tap on any of them to open this excellent editing interface, where you can align the photo, zoom it, set the positioning of the time numerals, and even try to fix the depth layering when it fails.

This interface is everything I wanted, but I can’t quite believe how hidden Apple made it. Even if you tap ‘Select’ and then select a photo, the only option you get is to remove it from the watch face. Apple should absolutely add an ‘Edit’ button somewhere in the selection interface so that users can conceivably figure out that these photos can be edited.

While the editing interface is enormously helpful, it’s still not perfect. It really doesn’t like to allow depth layering on images of dogs, for example. I’m not entirely sure why this is, as some of these images would clearly look great with the depth effect in place. Still though, even without the layering, the Portraits face is a great way to display our animal friends.

The depth layering option does not show up for these, but we can still fix alignment issues and the position of time numerals.

All things considered, I think Portraits is a very nice new watch face. It’s very similar to the existing Photos face, but has much cooler transitions. I wouldn’t have high hopes that the depth layering effect will work everywhere you want it to, but the offset zoom looks cool even without successful layering. You can tap in the middle of the face to manually cycle through your photo choices, but they’ll also cycle themselves automatically each time you lower and raise your wrist.

There’s only one complication choice (technically two, but the second one is either the current date or nothing), and it’s my least favorite style of complication (the long one that is just text). While I always wish for more complications, that’s ultimately just not what this watch face is about. It wants to display your images in an interesting way, and I think it mostly succeeds at that task. I recommend checking all the image you select though, as some might be so poorly laid out that you need to swap them for other options.

World Time Face

The World Time face is highly reminiscent of last year’s GMT watch face, with a circular outer dial showing detailed information. For World Time, the outer dial displays various world time zones at their correct offset from the timezone you’re currently in. You can use this face to get a sense of the hour-offset between time zones.

If you tap on the globe in the center of the World Time face, it rotates to a different angle. Nothing else on the face changes, so as far as I can tell this effect is just for show.

Personally, I find this watch face to be way too cluttered. It’s trying to pack in a lot of information, but I think the text is so small and cramped that the face’s utility is reduced. A version of this watch face where you could choose which time zones were displayed and hide all of the others might be better. For now, if you really want time zones on your wrist, the GMT face seems like a nicer implementation of this idea.

First-Party Apps

Despite its relative diminutiveness, watchOS 8 still includes a handful of updates to Apple’s first-party apps. Changes are mostly minor, but there are some definite improvements to take note of.

Timers

Let’s start with an easy win: the Timers app in watchOS 8 supports multiple simultaneous timers. When you start a timer from within the app, you can now hit the back button to return to the main view. Your timer will be shown counting down at the top, and you can proceed to start more timers or pause any running ones.

You can set timers using Siri as well, and in this case you can even give them names. For instance, saying “hey Siri, start a pasta timer for 12 minutes” will create a new timer in the Timers app and label it “Pasta.” Timers created manually from the app’s interface do not support labels.

When timers complete, you’ll get a full-screen interface which includes the timer’s label if it has one. You can then choose to end or repeat the timer.

Home

The Home app for watchOS has been supercharged with Apple’s favorite buzz words: machine learning. Surprising no one, I haven’t found this to be particularly effective. As usual though, since it’s machine learning, your mileage may vary.

In my apartment, I have twelve smart lightbulbs connected to HomeKit. Of these, I interact with seven of them multiple times each day via scenes. These seven bulbs are always on and always connected. The other five I use sparingly. They are generally turned off at the switch, and thus disconnected.

The new watchOS Home app reserves the top third of the screen for three circular “status symbol” slots. These slots are supposed to intelligently display device statuses, and grant access to devices.

Since five of my light bulbs are almost always disconnected, the top third of my Home app’s interface in watchOS 8 is usually worthless to me. It constantly utilizes the first of the three status symbol slots to inform me that five devices are offline. The other two slots are left entirely empty, wasting valuable screen real-estate. Below the status symbol slots, the Home app now “intelligently” displays a scrolling list of devices and scenes which it thinks I might want to use at any given time.

The more I’m exposed to machine learning, especially on watchOS, the more I wish in nearly every circumstance that Apple would just give me some manual controls. Or at least allow manual overrides for power users who want them. I think the new Home app’s redesign is great. I love the idea of having quicker access to device statuses, device controls, and scenes. But as long as machine learning is involved, I’ll never be able to reliably know what options exist there.

Apple just can’t know what I want before I want it as well as I can, and I wish they’d stop trying and let me take control. Instead of device status symbols, if I could set three light bulbs (or better yet, three scenes) to always show up at the top of the Home app, then I’d be using the app all the time. I’d even use it more if I could just set a standard sort order for the scrollable list of devices and scenes below the line of symbols. But alas, as it is, I almost never open the Home app on my Apple Watch.

If your HomeKit setup includes video cameras, then the watchOS 8 Home app might have some legitimately useful new functionality for you. The new update includes the ability to view live security camera footage, and even use your Apple Watch’s microphone and speakers to access two-way audio capabilities on supporting camera models. I don’t have cameras to test this with, but it sounds like a great new feature addition for the Watch.

Photos

Featured photos album and photo sharing in watchOS 8.

The watchOS 8 Photos app has been updated to include new featured photos and Memories. Featured photos show up automatically in the app, and there seems to be a rotating selection of ten of them which change over time.

Memories are also now supported on watchOS. You won’t see as many Memories as you see in Photos for iOS, but they’ll show up randomly. You can tap into each Memory to see a nice new mosaic-style grid view of that Memory’s photos.

Memories come and go without any control, and often there are none present at all. If you don’t see any right away on your own Apple Watch, try checking back the next day and hopefully one will have appeared.

Photos in watchOS 8 also supports sharing photos for the first time. When you tap into a photo, you’ll see a share button in the bottom-right corner which you can tap to share the image via Messages or Mail, or to create a new Photos watch face with it.

Wallet

The Wallet app in watchOS 8 has been updated alongside the iOS 15 Wallet app to support new card and key types. You’ll be able to store a digital key to your home, your official state driver’s license, and your car key in Wallet.

Of course, all of these features require more infrastructure around you to work. The lock on your home needs to support digital keys, as does your car. Your state needs to join Apple’s new program, which hasn’t fully launched yet.

It’s great to see the watchOS version of Wallet keeping up with its iOS counterpart, but it will probably be a few years at least before most of us can make use of most of these features.

Find My

watchOS 8’s three Find My variants.

Apple rebranded its watchOS Find My Friends app to “Find People” in watchOS 6. This year, it has added two more split-offs from the iOS Find My app to the Apple Watch.

Find Items is an app for tracking your AirTags or any alternative third-party devices enrolled in the Find My program. Find Devices tracks all of the Apple devices that you have connected to your iCloud account.

I get that Apple is trying to keep the complexity of its watchOS apps to a minimum, but having three apps for the same set of features feels even more confusing to me. Especially since these features are all found in the single Find My app on iOS and iPadOS. When you’re using the List view for navigating your Apple Watch apps this seems fine, since all three of the Find My app variants appear in a row. On the honeycomb view though, I don’t know how anyone is expected to figure out that there are three separate apps for these somewhat related tasks.

Assuming you can find the right app, all three of these are well-designed watchOS apps that I have no complaints about. Each offers a scrolling list of the people/items/devices that you can track, and allows you to tap into an individual entry to access a detailed view.

In the Find Devices app, the details view includes a map of where your device is (or was the last time it checked in), information on the device’s last known battery level, and buttons for interacting with it. You can play a sound from the device, put it into Lost mode, or kick off directions to the device via Maps.

Find Devices also supports notifications in watchOS 8, and will ping you if you leave a device behind in an unusual location. While I haven’t left my devices anywhere unexpectedly yet, I like the peace of mind that comes from these notifications. If I ever leave my iPad at a coffee shop, I expect a notification to come through when I’m just a few blocks away. It seems to work with enough accuracy that you’ll have time to head back and grab your forgotten device.

Weather

The watchOS Weather app itself hasn’t seen any significant changes, but in watchOS 8 you can receive detailed weather event notifications. These include severe weather alerts, and notifications of upcoming rain or snow. You can set these up in the Weather app on your iPhone in iOS 15.

Contacts

Creating and viewing contacts in watchOS 8.

watchOS 8 includes a first-party Contacts app for the first time. The app is as straightforward as it gets, but handles everything I’d want from it. You can create, edit, view, and delete contacts all from your Apple Watch. Viewing them gives you quick access to making a phone call, sending a text or email, or connecting via the watchOS Walkie-Talkie feature (in case anyone remembers what that is).

For contacts that you are following on Find My, you’ll see a map of their location in the Contacts app, and can launch the Find People app from there.

Creating a new contact is somewhat clunky, but also as good as you could expect from the wrist. In most cases you’ll probably want to pull your phone out to do this amount of text input, but when you’re in a pinch the Apple Watch can now get the job done. The ‘New Contact’ button can be found at the very top of the Contacts app. You have to swipe up from the default position to see it, because it lives above the top contact entry.

Messages and Text Input

Speaking of text input, it has been improved significantly in watchOS 8 because you can now mix-and-match content. In previous versions, tapping any emoji from the emoji list would send it immediately as its own message. Now you can swap back and forth between Scribble, dictation, and emoji inputs to compose a full message. You can also spin the Digital Crown to move the cursor input around (to get to the autocorrect suggestions you now need to tap a word in your message before spinning the Digital Crown). This change applies to the system text input interface, so it works in Messages, Mail, Contacts, and more first-party apps. Third-party apps can access this feature as well, but they may need to be updated by their developers first.

The Messages app itself now provides access to Apple’s #Images iMessage app. You can access this from the App Store icon in the Messages app in watchOS 8, and it fully supports searching for and sending animated GIFs just like its iOS counterpart.

Control Center

Control Center’s new status icons.

Control Center is mostly the same in watchOS 8, but now you’ll find a new set of status icons at the very top of it. These are the same tiny icons that have always flashed in the top center of the watch face. These icons are much easier to see when they’re all together, and you can tap on them to open up a detailed view that explains what each icon means and why it’s present.

I always found those tiny icons difficult to notice and sometimes hard to understand, so I love this change. It’s nice to tap in and see exactly which app is using the microphone on my watch, what the connection status to my iPhone is, and what Focus mode I’m currently in.

Focus Modes

The Do Not Disturb button in Control Center now opens Focus settings, and the icon and color changes based on which Focus mode is active.

On that note, Focus modes are new feature in iOS 15. They’re essentially custom Do Not Disturb setups, and you can create them on your iPhone. Once you have some Focus modes created, you can turn them on or off from your Apple Watch in watchOS 8.

Focus modes can be accessed from the Do Not Disturb icon in Control Center on the Watch. Just tap the icon and then choose from your list of Focus modes. You can select an amount of time that you want to mode to last for, or just choose “On” to keep it on until you turn it off.

The easy access to Focus modes is great, and I’m glad that Apple chose to put it in Control Center rather than making a new watchOS app specifically for this. The one item that might confuse watchOS users is that the watchOS Sleep mode has been moved to a Focus mode, so you now enable it via the Do Not Disturb icon rather than from its own icon in Control Center. Once you figure this out, it isn’t much more difficult to enable or disable Sleep mode than it was previously.

Hearing Protection

The green check on the ear icon quickly informs you that your volume levels aren’t too high.

The final new feature of Control Center is hearing protection. This is a new icon in the shape of an ear, and you can tap it to set the current volume of sound playing through your headphones. Below the current volume, you’ll see a slider that shows the impact this volume setting will have on your hearing over time.

I really like this feature as a way to double check that I’m not listening to music so loud that it might damage my hearing. The only unfortunate part is that the feature only works from your Apple Watch when you are playing audio from the Watch itself. If you’re playing audio from your iPhone then the hearing protection interface in watchOS’ Control Center will just show that nothing is playing.

The iOS Health app still shows a high-level overview of how recent headphone volume levels are affecting your hearing, but I wish that the live view on my Apple Watch would work even when audio is flowing from my phone.

Always-On Display

On the right is the Timers app’s adjusted interface for when the screen dims. Now rich data can be displayed instead of just a blank screen that shows the time.

In watchOS 8, developers finally have access to the appearance of the Apple Watch when its always-on display is dimmed. In previous versions, the display would cloud over with a dull gray color, and only the system time would be shown. Now, third-party apps will be displayed with their interfaces dimmed out. Developers will be able to control what shows up on the dimmed version, and what data should be updated over time or just removed altogether.

One common example that can be seen in Apple’s first-party apps is that minutes will continue to be displayed and updated, but seconds will be replaced with unmoving dashes. You can see this in the examples below, where the Timers app and the Workouts app replace seconds with dashes.

It will be interesting to see how developers take advantage of this, but it’s an objectively great improvement for any users of the Apple Watch Series 5 and beyond.

Conclusion

watchOS 8 is the sleepiest update we’ve seen for the Apple Watch thus far. The always-on face changes are excellent, but otherwise there’s not much to get excited about here. While there’s nothing explicitly wrong with a slow year of iteration, I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed.

The Apple Watch still seems to me like a platform with unrealized potential. Apple is killing it in the health and fitness department, but I think they’re dropping the ball in the “computer on your wrist” area. This year, they could only be bothered to make two new watch faces.

The good news is, I do like the Portraits face, and I think it will be a popular pick for new users. I’m worried that the vast majority of users won’t find the editing interface for this watch face, and thus might be more frustrated with it than necessary. Even then though, people should be able to find enough photos that look fine for the face to work for them. Ultimately I like more complications to be present, and I prefer analog faces, so Portraits isn’t for me. I wish Apple would have given me some other intriguing new options (World Time has way too much going on for my tastes), but I still like my classic Infograph face, so I’ll stick with it for another year.

watchOS 8 has plenty of small iterative improvements, making it the best watchOS update to date. While I’m pleased that I can say that, I still wish I could shower it with praises for some bigger, more interesting new features. While it may be a mostly mature operating system, I still think it’s far from done. Time will tell, but hopefully Apple agrees.