Coming Soon to an Apple Watch Near You
I wouldn’t normally touch on unreleased features in an OS release, but so many things were announced during last week’s Surprise and Shine event that I wanted to give readers a quick recap of what’s still to come in watchOS 27, even though I haven’t tried any of these features yet.
When the new Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 arrive on doorsteps and in Apple Stores on Friday, their owners will be able to enjoy the following additional features:
- Apple’s New Health Sensing System: Both new Watches have redesigned optical and electrical heart sensors, which will allow them to take heart rate measurements every five seconds and HRV readings as often as every five minutes, which is up to a 24-fold increase in HRV measurement frequency compared with previous Watches. Apple says the new sensors will provide more accurate and meaningful measurements.
- Heart Rate and Vitals: On the Series 12 and Ultra 4 Watches, the additional heart rate measurements also enable an HRV section with recovery and overall HRV readings. Vitals also gains access to recovery HRV in its overnight measurements and adds a daytime view.
- Readiness: Readiness is a new app that uses your sleep, vitals, and recent activities to compute a score from 0–10, which the app translates into Recover, Pace Yourself, Ready, or Go For It recommendations.
- Sound Recognition: The new Watches can analyze sounds like a baby crying, alarms, sirens, and doorbells even if your iPhone isn’t nearby. When a sound is recognized, users will be alerted on their Apple Watch.
- Automatic Music Recognition with Shazam: With Music Detection enabled on the new Watches, Shazam will identify background music when you open the Smart Stack, without requiring you to tap the widget.
In addition, later this year, Apple is adding two new features to the new Watches, which you can read about in greater depth in my preview story from last week:
- Live Rewind: Live Rewind, which plays a sound and animation to alert people that it’s been activated, transcribes the last 15 seconds of speech to help with hearing.
- Siri Recap: A summarization feature that will pull key points from conversations and will support only English at first.
Both features are set to debut as betas later this year and require a Series 12 or Ultra 4 Watch paired with a supported iPhone 16 or later, excluding the iPhone 16e, with Apple Intelligence and Siri AI enabled. Both features are opt-in, and Siri Recap can be enabled manually or scheduled by time and location. Unsaved recaps disappear after seven days. Apple says audio is protected by handling processing in a Secure Exclave, but the resulting text can still be saved and shared, and it’s possible for Siri summaries to miss or misunderstand details. Those are things I’ll be looking at carefully when I can try the features for myself.
Finally, later this year, Apple will debut a redesign of the Health app on the iPhone that also incorporates a Health Age feature, movement evaluations, and lab work purchases and scheduling in the U.S.
