watchOS 7 adds sleep tracking, hand wash detection, more to Apple Watch

Apple showcased its watchOS 7 update at its WWDC 2020 event. With it, the company brings in a number of new tweaks and improvements to all supported Apple Watches. The developer beta is now live at developer.apple.com and the public beta will be made available to users next month via beta.apple.com.

Here we are going to take a look at all of the new features, Apple has added to its watchOS 7 update.

watchOS 7 compatibility

watchOS 7 will be made available on Apple Watch Series 3, Apple Watch Series 4 and Apple Watch Series 5 paired with an iPhone 6s or later running iOS 14.

watchOS 7: Key features

Watch faces

watchOS 7 lets users discover and share unique combinations of watch faces inclusive of complications via the App Store, third-party websites and social media. Users can share new watch faces with each other via Messages or Mail.

Developers can now add more than one complication per app on a single watch face. For example “Dawn Patrol can show surfers tide, wind speed and water temperature from a favourite surf spot.”

Sleep tracking

With watchOS 7, Apple has introduced sleep tracking, with which the company claims users can get the “desired amount of sleep, get to bed on time and create a pre-bedtime routine to meet their sleep goals.” The company states that it is able to do that by detection of micro-movements from the watch’s accelerometer.

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While in Sleep Mode, the Apple Watch will turn on the Do Not Disturb mode and will automatically darken the screen overnight. To help wake up, the Apple Watch will ring a silent haptic alarm or gentle sounds.

All of the sleep data is encrypted locally on the device or in your iCloud account, with the company not having access to the data.

Handwashing detection

Hand washing has become an extremely big necessity in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We need to properly wash our hands at regular intervals so that we are not at risk of contracting the virus. Washing hands properly for at least 20 seconds can help prevent the spread of illness. Due to which Apple gas added an automatic handwashing detection feature inside of the watchOS 7 update.

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With the help of this feature, your Apple Watch will be able to automatically detect hand washing motions and sounds using its motion sensors, microphone and on-device machine learning. After which it will initiate a 20-second countdown timer to let you know when your hands are properly cleaned.

Fitness

watchOS 7 has a major focus on fitness. The company has added four new workout types to the Workout app: Core Training, Dance, Functional Strength Training and Cooldown. To calculate data for all of these new activities, the Apple Watch will use advanced sensor fusion, combining data from a number of its sensors and then making personalised calculations according to the user.

With the new watchOS 7 update, Apple has changed the name of the Activity app on iPhone to Fitness. The new Fitness app provides users with a streamlined view of data including daily Activity, Workouts, Awards and more.

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Hearing health

watchOS 7 comes with support for hearing health with headphone audio notifications. With the help of this feature, users will now be able to understand how loud they are listening to their headphones. Apple Watch will provide the users with notifications if they are listening to media too high or are exceeding the weekly limit of loud media hearing hours per week.

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With the help of the Health app, users can see how long they have been exposed to high decibel levels each week. They can also control the maximum level for headphone volume from within the app.

Privacy

All of the health data that your Apple Watch running watchOS 7 will collect, it will store in an encrypted state on the device locally or in your personal iCloud with iCloud sync. Apple allows users to delete any personal data they want to at any time and it does not maintain any backups of any sort.

Siri

With watchOS 7, Apple has added a new feature that allows Siri to translate languages using voice. Apple Watch also supports Announce Messages with Siri.