Apple Officially Explains watchOS 9 Release: New Dial, Enhanced Physical Training, and Refreshed Compass

The completely redesigned Compass App offers Compass Waypoints for quick and easy marking of locations or important places directly from within the App.

Insight into sleep.

Apple Watch's Sleep App experience already lets users set sleep and bedtime schedules and track their sleep to help them reach their sleep goals. watchOS 9's Sleep Tracking adds Sleep Stages to give users more insight into their sleep. Apple Watch uses signals from the acceleration sensor and heart rate sensor to detect whether the user is in REM sleep, core sleep, or deep sleep. Users will see sleep stage data in the Sleep App on Apple Watch, see more details like sleep duration, and see additional metrics like heart rate and breathing rate in the Sleep Comparison Chart in the iPhone Health App.

The machine learning model is trained and validated on the clinical gold standard, the polysomnogram, and is one of the largest and most diverse wearable device studies in terms of number of subjects. Because the science of sleep is still being explored, users in the U.S. will be able to add to it in the future by submitting their own sleep stage data through the Apple Heart and Motion Study on the Research app.

Apple Watch Series 8 displays sleep stages such as REM sleep, core sleep, and deep sleep, including time awake.

With the introduction of sleep stages, Apple Watch now provides further insight into sleep by estimating whether a user is in REM sleep, core sleep or deep sleep.

Medication

The new Medication App experience on Apple Watch and iPhone helps users manage and track the medications, vitamins and supplements they take by allowing them to create medication lists, create schedules and reminders, and view medication information in the Health App. The new Medication App on Apple Watch gives users the ability to conveniently and rigorously track their medication use anytime, anywhere.

Whether it's multiple times a day, once a week or as needed, users can create a personalized schedule for each medication and set reminders to help them take their medications on time.

The phone next to Apple Watch Series 8 displays the Medication app experience, including possible medication conflicts and a list of medications to take.

The new Medication App experience on Apple Watch and iPhone helps users manage and track the medications, vitamins and supplements they take.

New Features for Period Tracking

In iOS 16 and watchOS 9, users of Period Track will be alerted when their period history deviates from predictions, such as irregular periods, low frequency, prolonged periods or persistent spotting, because such deviations may be a sign of an underlying health condition.

The phone placed next to the Apple Watch Series 8 displays the Period Tracker interface, which includes wrist temperatures and ovulation day predictions.

New with iOS 16 and watchOS 9, users of Period Track will receive an alert when there are possible deviations from their period history (such as irregular periods, low frequency, prolonged periods, or persistent spotting).

Privacy

Privacy is critical in the design and development of all Apple features. When users lock their phones with a passcode, Touch ID or Face ID, all health and exercise data in the Health App is encrypted, except for information on medical emergency cards. Any Health App data that is backed up to iCloud is also protected by encryption while in transit or stored on Apple servers. When dual authentication is enabled by default in iOS and watchOS and a passcode is used, data synced from the Health App to iCloud is encrypted end-to-end, which means Apple can't decrypt and read it.