Apple Releases watchOS 11 With Revamped Smart Stack, Vitals App, Activity Breaks and More

Apple today released watchOS 11, the latest version of the operating system that runs on the Apple Watch. watchOS 11 is compatible with the Apple Watch Series 6 and later, all Apple Watch Ultra models, and the Apple Watch SE 2.

watchOS 11 Thumb 2 1
watchOS 11 can be downloaded for free on an iPhone running iOS 18 by opening up the Apple Watch app and going to General > Software Update. To install the new software, the Apple Watch needs to have at least 50 percent battery and it needs to be placed on a charger.

watchOS 11 overhauls the Smart Stack that you can get to by turning the Digital Crown. There are new widgets like Shazam and Photos, plus the Apple Watch now supports interactive widgets and Live Activities.

The Messages Check In feature is now available on the Apple Watch, so you can check in when going to the gym or heading out on a nighttime run, allowing a family member or friend to get a notification when your workout ends to make sure you get back home safely.

A new Vitals app provides context about key health metrics measured during sleep, including heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, and blood oxygen, providing a daily report on whether everything is in a typical range. Training Load is available for athletes preparing for an event like a marathon, and the Workout app supports more workout types.

The Fitness app has customizable activity rings that can be changed on a per-day basis, so you can set higher goals on weekdays or weekends, for example. You can also now pause your streak for rest days or due to an illness or injury, providing a way to avoid ruining a long Activity streak when you're sick or need a break.

Apple added the Translate app to the Apple Watch so you can get translations right on your wrist, plus there's a Translate app widget. Apple Maps has hikes for all U.S. national parks, and you can create your own walking and hiking routes. Apple's full release notes for watchOS 11 are below.

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 a Up Next workout view in Custom Workouts
- Customize your Activity rings 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 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, Telugu) and three new languages (Burmese, Khmer, 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 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 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 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

Some features may not be available for all countries or all areas, for more information visit:
https://www.apple.com/watchos/feature-availability/
For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/100100

More information on the new features in watchOS 11 can be found in our comprehensive watchOS 11 roundup.

Related Roundup: watchOS 26
Related Forum: Apple Watch

Popular Stories

iphone air thickness

Apple Said to Cut iPhone Air Production Amid Underwhelming Sales

Friday October 17, 2025 8:29 am PDT by
Apple plans to cut production of the iPhone Air amid underwhelming sales performance, Japan's Mizuho Securities believes (via The Elec). The Japanese investment banking and securities firm claims that the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are seeing higher sales than their predecessors during the same period last year, while the standard iPhone 17 is a major success, performing...
iOS 26 Feature

iOS 26.1 to iOS 26.4 Will Add These New Features to Your iPhone

Saturday October 18, 2025 11:00 am PDT by
iOS 26 was released last month, but the software train never stops, and iOS 26.1 beta testing is already underway. So far, iOS 26.1 makes both Apple Intelligence and Live Translation on compatible AirPods available in additional languages, and it includes some other minor changes across the Apple Music, Calendar, Photos, Clock, and Safari apps. More features and changes will follow in future ...
iOS 26

iOS 26.0.2 Update for iPhones Coming Soon

Friday October 17, 2025 7:35 am PDT by
Apple's software engineers continue to internally test iOS 26.0.2, according to MacRumors logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions. iOS 26.0.2 will be a minor update that addresses bugs and/or security vulnerabilities, but we do not know any specific details yet. The update will likely be released by the end of next week. Last month, Apple released iOS 26.0.1,...
HomePod mini and Apple TV

Apple's Next Rumored Products: New HomePod Mini, Apple TV, and More

Thursday October 16, 2025 9:13 am PDT by
Apple on Wednesday updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro with its next-generation M5 chip, but previous rumors have indicated that the company still plans to announce at least a few additional products before the end of the year. The following Apple products have at one point been rumored to be updated in 2025, although it is unclear if the timeframe for any of them has...
14 inch MacBook Pro Keyboard

New 14-Inch MacBook Pro Has Two Key Upgrades Beyond the M5 Chip

Thursday October 16, 2025 8:31 am PDT by
Apple on Wednesday updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with an M5 chip, and there are two key storage-related upgrades beyond that chip bump. First, Apple says the new 14-inch MacBook Pro offers up to 2× faster SSD performance than the equivalent previous-generation model, so read and write speeds should get a significant boost. Apple says it is using "the latest storage technology," ...
Apple iPad Pro hero M5

New iPad Pro Has Six Key Upgrades Beyond M5 Chip

Saturday October 18, 2025 10:57 am PDT by
While the new iPad Pro's headline feature is the M5 chip, the device has some other changes, including N1 and C1X chips, faster storage speeds, and more. With the M5 chip, the new iPad Pro has up to a 20% faster CPU and up to a 40% faster GPU compared to the previous model with the M4 chip, according to Geekbench 6 results. Keep in mind that 256GB and 512GB configurations have a 9-core CPU,...
m4 macbook air blue

M5 MacBook Air Coming Spring 2026 With M5 Mac Studio and Mac Mini in Development

Thursday October 16, 2025 3:57 pm PDT by
Apple plans to launch MacBook Air models equipped with the new M5 chip in spring 2026, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Apple is also working on M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models that will come early in the year. Neither the MacBook Pro models nor the MacBook Air models are expected to get design changes, with Apple focusing on simple chip upgrades. In the case of the MacBook Pro, a m...
iPhone Siri Glow

Some Apple Employees Have 'Concerns' About iOS 26.4's Revamped Siri

Sunday October 19, 2025 7:39 am PDT by
iOS 26.4 is expected to introduce a revamped version of Siri powered by Apple Intelligence, but not everyone is satisfied with how well it works. In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said some of Apple's software engineers have "concerns" about the overhauled Siri's performance. However, he did not provide any specific details about the shortcomings. iOS 26.4 will...
14 inch MacBook Pro Keyboard

M5 Chip Achieves Impressive Feat in 14-Inch MacBook Pro Speed Test

Friday October 17, 2025 7:10 am PDT by
The first alleged benchmark result for the M5 chip in the new 14-inch MacBook Pro has surfaced, allowing for some performance comparisons. Based on a single unconfirmed result uploaded to the Geekbench 6 database today, the M5 chip has pulled off an impressive feat. Specifically, the chip achieved a score of 4,263 for single-core CPU performance, which is the highest single-core score that...

Top Rated Comments

coffeemilktea Avatar
14 months ago
I'm so sad that my first-generation Apple Watch SE won't get this update...

..I think it's time for some retail therapy. ?



Attachment Image
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BruiserB Avatar
14 months ago

My current fear is that my Watch 4 will barely work after this... Anyone has testes the RC on it?
No need to worry....only works with Watch 6 and up!
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Funny Apple Man Avatar
14 months ago
Very uncool of them to cut off SE 1 support prematurely with watchOS 11. It only had 4 years of support.

It sucks but I wanted to upgrade anyways. So I recently got a Series 8 stainless steel which was new in-box. Very happy with it and I don’t feel like I’m missing out by not getting Series 10.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
iRizz Avatar
14 months ago
I'm dumb. Apparently the SE1 isn't getting this update, despite being barely 4 years old. I guess there had to be at least ONE thing about Apple that annoyed me today, because macOS and iOS have been great.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Blaze70 Avatar
14 months ago

It’s asked me to update to 17.7 on both my 15 pro max and m1 iPad
I had this issues on the update screen you have to swipe up from the bottom of screen and you’ll see iOS 18 hiding down there, hope this helps
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DocMultimedia Avatar
14 months ago

What's the build number? Same as the RC last week (22R349)?

Bc battery life on my Ultra is still ? on the RC like it has been all throughout the betas
I was curious about this. Thanks. I'll hold off till at least the next version before updating.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)