watchOS 11 release notes: What’s new for your Apple Watch in this update?

Read the official watchOS 11 release notes from Apple to learn what’s new, improved and fixed in this software update for your Apple Watch.

Apple will release watchOS 11.0 alongside iOS 18.0, macOS Sequoia 15.0 and other updates on Monday, September 9. To install the update, you must have an iPhone Xs or later running iOS 18. The system requirements for watchOS 11 have changed, as the update drops support for the Apple Watch Series 4 (2018) and Series 9 (2019).

Apple Intelligence won’t be available on the Apple Watch for now, except for summarized notifications pushed from the paired iPhone to your wrist.

watchOS 11 brings new training features, including training load, plus Live Activities, the ability to pause your activity rings, new workout types, the new Vitals and Translate apps, sleep apnea detection, double-tap gesture enhancements, the revamped Photos watchface, and more. For further information about watchOS 11, visit apple.com/watchos/watchOS-11.

watchOS 11 release notes: What’s new for your Apple Watch?

To read the watchOS 11 release notes on your iPhone, hit Learn More before installing an over-the-air update in Settings > General > Software Update within the companion Watch app. The full changelog follows right ahead.

watchOS 11 brings powerful health and fitness insights, along with even more personalization, intelligence and ways to stay connected to the world’s most popular watch. It has new experiences that provide deeper insights into your daily health status and help you understand the impact of your workouts over time. watchOS 11 uses the power of machine learning to help you easily create the perfect Photos watch face and the Smart Stack becomes even more intelligent and capable with suggested widgets, interactive widgets and Live Activities. To further support your fitness journey, you can now adjust your Activity ring goals by day of the week or even pause them for a rest day. watchOS 11 also includes Check In, the Translate app, new ways to support you during pregnancy, sleep apnea notifications and more.

Fitness
● Track the impact that the intensity, based on effort ratings, and the duration of your workouts have on your body over time with training load
● Review estimated effort ratings automatically provided after completing popular cardio workouts, including running, cycling, swimming, hiking and more
● See how your effort is categorized into one of four Effort labels: Easy, Moderate, Hard and All Out and modify to match your perception of the effort required to complete the workout
● Include distance as an in-session metric for a wider variety of sports in the Workout app, including Soccer and American Football, and route maps have been added to additional outdoor workouts like Outdoor Rowing and Cross Country Skiing
● Create Custom Workouts for Pool Swim workouts with support for sets of work and recovery
● View the time left in your current interval and prepare for your next interval with an Up Next workout view in Custom Workouts
● Customize your Activity ring goals by the day of the week in the Activity app
● Pause your Activity rings for a rest day, week, month or more without affecting your award streak
● Personalize the Summary tab in the Fitness app on iPhone with metrics that are most important to you, like step distance, step count, running power and more

Translate
● Dictate phrases and have them automatically translated and played out loud with support for 20 languages
● Easily access the Translate app with the widget in the Smart Stack, which will intelligently be added when traveling to a location where the language is different than your Apple Watch
● See the pronunciation of languages using the Latin alphabet to help make your interactions more conversational for Mandarin (CN simplified), Japanese and Korean
● Download languages to access offline translation without a cellular or Wi-Fi connection (available on Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2)

Tides
● Review tide data for over 115,000 beaches and 5,000 surf spots worldwide, including high and low tides, rising and falling tides, tide height and direction in the new Tides app
● Discover beaches near your location with detailed map views or search for a beach by name
● Customize your watch face with tide complications to show the current tide information for your favorite surf spot or the closest beach

Smart Stack
● View timely information in the Smart Stack with suggested widgets that will automatically appear intelligently using signals like time and date, location, wake-up and bedtime and more to determine priority
● View up-to-date information from apps to see the progress of an activity, event or task at a glance with Live Activities
● Interact with an app right from a widget in the Smart Stack

Watch Faces
● Create a dynamic Photos watch face using image categories like People, Pets, Cities or Nature to intelligently curate the best photos from your iPhone based on aesthetics, composition and facial expressions
● Visualize the passing of time with the Flux watch face, which uses dynamic typography and color to fill the face from the bottom to the top as seconds count up
● See how the Reflections watch face reflects light with a metallic sunburst dial that changes in response to the movement of your wrist)
● Customize how time is displayed on Apple Watch with one of nine major Indian scripts (Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Meitei, Odia, Ol Chiki and Telugu) and three new languages (Burmese, Khmer and Urdu) available on select watch faces (Astronomy, California, Memoji, Modular, Modular Duo, Modular Compact, Utility, World Time and X-Large)

Sleep Apnea Notifications
● Receive possible sleep apnea notification when breathing disturbance data shows consistent signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea over a 30-day period (available on Apple Watch Series 9 and later and Apple Watch Ultra 2)
● Estimate interruptions in the respiratory pattern during sleep with Breathing Disturbances metric, which is classified as Elevated or Not Elevated
● Review sharable report for richer conversations with healthcare providers after receiving a sleep apnea notification
● Support for users 18 years or older without a previous diagnosis of sleep apnea

Other features:
● Start a Check In from Messages, Workout controls or the Smart Stack to automatically alert a friend or family member when you reach your destination, after a pre-determined time or when your workout ends
● Use Maps on Apple Watch to view custom walking and hiking routes downloaded to your iPhone and access turn-by-turn directions for your route even when offline
● View relevant information about your tickets like directions to parking or show start times with updates to tickets in Wallet
● Scroll through any app like Messages, Mail or Weather, using the double tap gesture (available on Apple Watch Series 9 and later and Apple Watch Ultra 2)
● Use Tap to Cash to send money to someone by simply bringing your Apple Watch near their iPhone or Apple Watch (US only). Available on Apple Watch Series 7 and later, Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) and all Apple Watch Ultra models
● Unlock your door on approach with Ultra Wideband (UWB) home keys without having to move Apple Watch close to the lock (available on Apple Watch models with UWB)
● Browse personalized recommendations and discover new workouts and meditations with a simple navigation system that includes For You, Explore, Library and Search
● Review current gestational age and log symptoms experienced during pregnancy in Cycle Tracking when you log a pregnancy in the Health app on iPhone
● Access additional controls with Remote, including volume, power, Siri hold-to-talk and more

Apple’s support document detailing security fixes in its software will be updated later with information on the security content of watchOS 11, including patches for major vulnerabilities and security fixes.

Language and region restrictions

Certain capabilities in watchOS 11 may require recent Apple Watch models, and others may not be available in all countries and languages.

For example, eye tracking and live transcription require an iPhone 12 and later. Other features may be geo-restricted or not work in all languages. For more information about this, read Apple’s iOS Feature Availability page.

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