watchOS 10 will bring widgets, World Clock, new fitness features, and more

New watchOS 10 design language and navigation

Apple Watch apps that are preloaded such as Weather, Stocks, Home, Maps, Messages, World Clock, and others will now make better use of the display to show you more information than they previously did. The Activity app will also show you more details while tracking your daily movements, including making it easier to share, a redesigned trophy case, and Apple Fitness+ trainer tips.

What's especially cool is that there's a new "Smart Stack" that can contain widgets and can be accessed by twisting the Digital Crown from any watch face. At the beginning of a day, for example, the Weather will show up and give you the forecast, or if you're traveling, your boarding pass information can be surfaced. Calendar and Reminders will show you information for the day too.

Developers can make use of the new watchOS design language to utilize the entire display. For example, Streaks can now be used across the entire display to show progress and access tasks, with the NBA app showing you team colors and new game details. As Apple says, thanks to Waterllama’s redesign, users can quickly glance at their hydration from the last seven days by turning the Digital Crown.

Finally, Control Center can now be accessed using the side button, with a double click of the Digital Crown going back to apps used recently.

New watchOS 10 watch faces

watchOS 10 comes with two new watch faces: Palette and Snoopy. Palette depicts time in a variety of colors using three different overlapping layers, and colors shift as time passes.

In the case of the Snoopy watchface, it brings Snoopy and Woodstock from the Peanuts comic strip to your wrist. The characters interact with the watch hands, react to the weather changes, and get active when the user is doing a workout.

Fitness and health

Cycling

watchOS 10 adds a bunch of new features for cyclists with advanced new metrics, views, and experiences. When you start a cycling activity on your watch, it will show up as a Live Activity on your iPhone, which will fill the screen when tapped. Workout Views, such as Heart Rate Zones, Elevation, Race Route, Custom Workouts, and a new Cycling Speed view, will be displayed on the screen and can be mounted on a bike, for example.

New algorithms that can estimate things such as the new Functional Threshold Power (FTP) will be able to tell you, in theory, what the highest level of cycling intensity is that you can maintain for an hour. Apple Watches will use FTP to calculate personalized Power Zones which can see the current zone you're in and track how long you're in each of them. This will help cyclists then improve performance.

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