Apple Watch Series 9: A Major Update with Enhanced Features and Improvements

The Apple Watch Series 9 has arrived, bringing with it a plethora of exciting features and improvements that will revolutionize the way we interact with our timepieces. The first major change to note is the new transition feature between each leg of your workout. This innovative feature allows you to automatically switch between activities without having to manually do it yourself. For instance, if you're transitioning from swimming to running, the watch will seamlessly adjust to accommodate your new activity.

Another notable feature is the ability to detect when you're using a kickboard during pool workouts. If you're an Apple Fitness+ user and paired with your Apple Watch, you'll receive on-screen alerts to remind you when it's time for high-intensity intervals or to start cooling down. This feature has been tested extensively and works wonderfully with the Apple TV. You can also now compare your results from previous sessions, allowing you to track your progress and improve your performance.

The Calendar App has received a significant update, enabling users to add new events directly into their calendar without needing to retrieve their iPhone. When adding an event, users can tap the "+" button and enter the title, location, date, time, repeat tags, and more – all directly from their Apple Watch. This feature is particularly useful for those who prefer the convenience of wearing their watch rather than carrying around their phone.

The Reminders App has also been updated to allow users to edit existing reminders directly on their Apple Watch. Users can now add notes, change titles, set dates and times, and even tag locations – all from the comfort of their wrist. This feature is especially handy for those who need to stay on top of tasks without needing to constantly switch between devices.

In addition to these updates, the Podcast App has received a few notable changes as well. For instance, users can now search for their favorite podcasts, including HomeKit Insider. The "Listen Now" tab allows users to discover new shows and podcasts, while the "Up Next" queue enables you to pick up where you left off when listening to your favorite shows.

One of the most significant features for those with AFib is the ability to track lifestyle factors that may contribute to their condition. Users can now monitor their sleep, exercise, weight, and even alcohol consumption – all within the Health App. This feature allows users to share their results in PDF format with their doctor, providing valuable insights into their overall health.

The Low Power Mode has also been updated, replacing the previous Power Reserve mode. When enabled, this feature significantly improves battery life by slowing down background sensors, Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity, and even reducing Bluetooth usage. Users can now easily turn Low Power Mode on and off from the Control Center, with a significant impact on their Apple Watch's battery life.

As an accessibility feature, users can now mirror their Apple Watch to their iPhone for easy communication or technical assistance. This feature is particularly useful for those who need to explain complex information or require hands-free support.

The Dock of Apple Watches has also been redesigned, allowing users to see applications that are actively running in the background without taking over the entire screen. A small banner at the top displays notification alerts, ensuring that users remain notified without interrupting their workflow.

Lastly, Apple Watch Cellular models will now support international roaming, providing users with seamless connectivity across the globe. Additionally, support for Bluetooth keyboards has been added, allowing users to type out messages or take notes directly from their watch face. Cardio recovery is also tracked within the Health App on iPhone, ensuring a comprehensive picture of your fitness and wellness.

With these exciting updates, the Apple Watch Series 9 promises to revolutionize the way we interact with our devices and track our health and wellness. Whether you're an athlete, student, or simply someone looking for a convenient way to stay connected, this watch has something for everyone.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwatch os 9 is now available here are more than 50 new features changes and enhancements in this massive new update welcome everybody to apple insider it is andrew here and as i said apple has released watchos 9. it is now available you can download it yourself on your apple watch in this video i'm going to walk you through a hands-on of more than 50 new features changes and enhancements coming in this update so let's go ahead and get into this our tour of watchos 9 begins with the new watch faces there are three new watch faces here with watch os knights including this new lunar face i'm going to go ahead and tap and hold and check it out in a little bit more detail lunarface you can see we can choose from three different calendars chinese hebrew as well as islamic you can choose whichever calendar you'd like to use we can swipe over we can change how we view the time so whether we want digital or analog one more over we can change the color of the second dial there there's plenty of color options to choose from and lastly there are complications there are four complications supported on this watch face the next face that we can look at going back is the metropolitan face this is definitely one of my favorites it has four complications on it there's various styles that you can choose from to really dial get it dial dial this in to your liking there's background colors colors for the whole thing rainbow lots of different ones in here and four complications then the last option is the play time phase kind of fun doesn't support any complications but definitely a kid-friendly face and as you tap on the little characters you'll actually come back and react as you poke them and i love that you can actually poke them enough they'll come back and bump into the screen and react like they're actually hitting that front glass so really neat little animations here this was a partnership with joy fulton who's a chicago-based artist really neat fun face for kids besides the new faces there are some changes to existing faces so we scrolled left the portraits face this one now can support pet portraits as well as human portraits and it'll do things like overlay the text and the images on the background depending on how they were shot so some really neat effects for pet portraits and with dogs as well as cats here with watch os 16 and it even supports landscapes as well moving over the astronomy phase has been updated it's not a new face but it has definitely improved remarkably so again you can choose a few different things the time the view you have the earth moon and the solar system as a whole choose whichever one you'd like you can go with the earth view style how you want to see more detail similar to the new lock screens on the iphone and then we have complications the top and bottom just two of them there so these ones are just really gorgeous a lot of new imagery are joining these faces they can show current cloud coverage which is pretty cool and as you scroll through you can see how the time of day affects the globe really cool i love this they really did a great job on these new astronomy faces other ones were updated including modular modular compact xl breathe all have new options like background options i like this these are these new gradient backgrounds if i tap on edit go over here to colors there are several gradient backgrounds that apple has pre-designed that you can choose from so neat new background color options for several new or existing watch faces another change with watch os 9 is the nike faces are now available to everybody these used to be exclusive to nike versions of the apple watch which means for me i love the stainless steel version of the apple watch i could never use the nike faces because they were never available on stainless steel but now they are so if you have a regular version of apple watch you can check out the nike analog nike bounce nike compact nike digital and nike hybrid faces on your apple watch plus you can change your apple watch face just as you can change your lock screen and a home screen based on the focus mode you are in there are some great new additions to sleep tracking on apple watch with watch os 9. the app watch will now use the gyroscope as well as the heart ray sensor to monitor you throughout the night and track your core rem deep and awake sleep cycles beyond that it can show comparison graphs on the iphone inside of the health app that'll match your heart rate and respiratory rate compared to how you were sleeping finally apple has a new way to get in and out of sleep mode so here we're in sleep mode already we're going to put the apple watch asleep you can see we've got the sleep facing on it's very dim to get out of this you used to have to twist the digital crown now you must hold the digital crown to be able to access your watch when you're sleeping that way it doesn't inadvertently wake up in the middle of the night and wake you up apple added a whole new app with watch os 9 that's the medications app medications will help you track your medications and vitamins that you take every day or every few days or every week or however often it may be it'll include alerts on your watch to let you know when it's time to take your medication it'll let you know which ones you've longed you can view any of your medications and view your schedule when you should take them or manually log them one by one it's really easy to set this up over on your iphone and keep track of it here on your apple watch before getting into that i have to call out one of our sponsors adorama apple insider followers can save literally hundreds of dollars on apple products by applying code ap insider at checkout but you must follow these steps to get these great deals use the link down below in the description or go to prices.appleinsider.com and follow any of the links on the adorama column for the products that you're shopping for thanks again to adorama for sponsoring this video now let's get back to our content apple has basically entirely redesigned the compass app here in watchos 9. first you can zoom in and out of the actual view to view three different versions of the compass app so here's one version of it if we use the digital crown we can scroll up and i can exit the second version that i can't show because it has my longitude and latitude and then the last version again that has my bearing there as where i'm facing you can pull up this menu here on the left with additional information you can tap on done there i can tap in the lower left hand corner where i can access any waypoints that i've added so i have my parked car or anything like that and this supports backtrack backtrack allows you to head out into the wilderness and keep track of where you're going that way you can always find your way back this is very handy for hikers if you've ever gone out west and wander around a little bit it can definitely be scary so backtrack is a really cool new feature that i'm excited for here in watchos9 for women the cycle tracking app has been updated and it can now alert you if you have an irregular pattern for your cycle so if you haven't had one in a certain period of time you've had them too frequently or any other irregularities that the cycle app is able to detect after you've logged quite a bit of data you'll get an alert about those just to make sure you're on top of it one of the biggest apps to get upgrade is the workouts app and there's a serious ton of changes to talk about with workouts so first up there are new workout views so if i choose something here they do decent amount how about indoor cycle let's go ahead and start this workout now we can scroll using the digital crown to go to some different views this one here is the new heart rate zones it can show you your max and resting heart rate to create personalized zones for during your workout or you can set zones manually inside of the settings here to get the ones that you want so as you get your heart rate up you can move into those different zones how much calories you're burning and everything else you can kind of focus on your biggest burn ones from your kind of starting out your warm ups to your cool downs and everything in between or if you're pushing things just too hard if we keep scrolling down we can see other views in this this is another new one this is the activity rings view you can see your actual activity earnings while in your workout very handy you don't have to jump to your home screen or lock screen or your watch face anything like that to check your rings you can see them while in the workout seems you know small but it's been a problem at least for me some workouts have additional views for example this outdoor run you can see we have our zones there this is a new pacer one that has additional information you can see things like splits segments and that kind of stuff if we scroll down we have the elevation face now this one will show your max elevation as well as your total gain and it can visualize them this will apply for outdoor runs outdoor cycle outdoor wheelchair run pace hiking outdoor walk and outdoor wheelchair walk pace you can see it visualized there along the top and if we keep scrolling we have our activity rings that we looked at before if we take an activity like outdoor run and tap on the ellipses there you can see we can choose those different types of workouts that existed before but now we have so many more options you can scroll down and see all these different types of workouts including custom workouts you can create custom workouts with a repeating set of intervals based on time distance or an open goal jump into here you can see i want to work recovery and you can just keep repeating those before adding a cool down at the end you can have the length anything that you want to set and it'll automatically walk you through this using the updated pacer now if we go up and choose something else just like maybe the open one i do this one quite a bit i can choose my alerts that i get so my paste ones all of these can be customized now and if we go back workout views you can see we have the views we can preview them right here at the top or i can edit views and choose and customize all of these so you can see we have our different views we have our heart rate ones and you can choose whether or not to include them just with this little toggle here so on or off based on what i actually want to see in my workouts you can see there's the updated elevation one there's a ton of different ones here you just choose which ones you want or don't want to show up in your workout and you can do these on a per workout basis so set them for running for cycling anything like that for running it'll also now monitor stride length ground contact time and vertical oscillation for multi-sport tracking this has a bunch of new enhancements including for triathlons and duathlons it can automatically move between swimming cycling and running and will modify transitions between each of those legs it'll automatically move between them and you don't have to manually do it for pool swim this can now automatically detect when you're using a kickboard if you're an apple fitness plus user and you're using your apple watch with apple fitness plus there will be new on-screen call outs that alert you about things like when you should have high intensity or be cooling down been testing that for a while as well and it works really nicely when i'm using it with the apple tv you also have the new found ability to race yourself if you take the same path time and time again you can compare your results to how you were actually racing last time and can get pacer alerts to let you know if you're falling behind your previous rate the calendar app was updated allowing you to add a new event directly into the calendar and you can change the view options including up next day or list view when you're going and adding a new event you can tap the plus button add your title location when it is and everything else that you need right here directly from your apple watch without having to grab your iphone the reminders app was updated now you can go ahead and edit these reminders that you've added you can add notes change the title add a date time repeat tags and locations a bunch of information that you couldn't add before directly from the apple watch in the podcast app there's a few changes to talk about here too so first you now have the ability to search so you can search for your favorite podcast like homekit insider if i had to suggest one so you can search for your podcast you can also use the new listen now tab where you can find new and exciting things to listen to so there's a list to choose from a bunch of ways to find new stuff to listen to or the up next queue that you were already listening to once you just went to continue where you left off again like that homekit insider podcast and the last thing you can do with the updated podcast app is follow and unfollow shows for any 22 year old or older that's been diagnosed with afib you can now see afib history you can get weekly notifications with how much time you've spent in afib highlights to show what days and times your afib is at its highest and it'll track lifestyle factors that may contribute these lifestyle factors include exercise sleep weight alcohol and more that are all tracked inside of the health app and you can share your results with a pdf to your doctor for further discussion another useful new feature is low power mode you can tap on the battery indicator here inside a control center and you'll see how much battery life you have remaining but below that you'll see low power mode this used to be power reserve mode power reserve mode was replaced with this updated low power mode when you go to enable low power mode your apple watch will automatically slow things down in the background it'll turn off background sensors such as your heart rate monitoring and spo2 measurements and it'll turn things lower such as how frequently your watch is checking in via wi-fi or cellular it'll still work via bluetooth and you'll still have notifications coming in from your phone but if you're not near your phone some things may be delayed but you can drastically improve the battery life of your apple watch when low power mode is enabled you can turn it on right here from control center and just another tap you can turn it off again when you're ready to conserve battery life you should be able to get around twice the battery life with low power mode turned on depending on the apple watch model you have build as an accessibility feature you can mirror your apple watch to your iphone it's helpful if you're trying to explain somebody what to do or just for technical assistance when actively using your apple watch there are new redesigned notifications that come in that only pop in on part of your screen instead of taking over your entire screen there'll be a small little banner right at the top to not inconvenience you as you're still actively using your watch the dock of apple watch has been updated and will now show applications that are actively running inside of the background though you can still go into settings and changes to your favorites if you'd prefer apple watch cellular models will now support international roaming that's also a new feature here with apple watch and watch os 9. there's support for bluetooth keyboards on apple watch and cardio recovery is tracked in the health app over on iphone so that wraps it up that is a lot of changes people i am particularly excited about the changes to watch faces as well as the redesigned notifications when you're using a watch it's massively improved compared to that full thing taking over the screen i like what apple has done here and i'm really excited for the new apple watches as well stay tuned to apple insider for all of the details on apple's newest wearables youwatch os 9 is now available here are more than 50 new features changes and enhancements in this massive new update welcome everybody to apple insider it is andrew here and as i said apple has released watchos 9. it is now available you can download it yourself on your apple watch in this video i'm going to walk you through a hands-on of more than 50 new features changes and enhancements coming in this update so let's go ahead and get into this our tour of watchos 9 begins with the new watch faces there are three new watch faces here with watch os knights including this new lunar face i'm going to go ahead and tap and hold and check it out in a little bit more detail lunarface you can see we can choose from three different calendars chinese hebrew as well as islamic you can choose whichever calendar you'd like to use we can swipe over we can change how we view the time so whether we want digital or analog one more over we can change the color of the second dial there there's plenty of color options to choose from and lastly there are complications there are four complications supported on this watch face the next face that we can look at going back is the metropolitan face this is definitely one of my favorites it has four complications on it there's various styles that you can choose from to really dial get it dial dial this in to your liking there's background colors colors for the whole thing rainbow lots of different ones in here and four complications then the last option is the play time phase kind of fun doesn't support any complications but definitely a kid-friendly face and as you tap on the little characters you'll actually come back and react as you poke them and i love that you can actually poke them enough they'll come back and bump into the screen and react like they're actually hitting that front glass so really neat little animations here this was a partnership with joy fulton who's a chicago-based artist really neat fun face for kids besides the new faces there are some changes to existing faces so we scrolled left the portraits face this one now can support pet portraits as well as human portraits and it'll do things like overlay the text and the images on the background depending on how they were shot so some really neat effects for pet portraits and with dogs as well as cats here with watch os 16 and it even supports landscapes as well moving over the astronomy phase has been updated it's not a new face but it has definitely improved remarkably so again you can choose a few different things the time the view you have the earth moon and the solar system as a whole choose whichever one you'd like you can go with the earth view style how you want to see more detail similar to the new lock screens on the iphone and then we have complications the top and bottom just two of them there so these ones are just really gorgeous a lot of new imagery are joining these faces they can show current cloud coverage which is pretty cool and as you scroll through you can see how the time of day affects the globe really cool i love this they really did a great job on these new astronomy faces other ones were updated including modular modular compact xl breathe all have new options like background options i like this these are these new gradient backgrounds if i tap on edit go over here to colors there are several gradient backgrounds that apple has pre-designed that you can choose from so neat new background color options for several new or existing watch faces another change with watch os 9 is the nike faces are now available to everybody these used to be exclusive to nike versions of the apple watch which means for me i love the stainless steel version of the apple watch i could never use the nike faces because they were never available on stainless steel but now they are so if you have a regular version of apple watch you can check out the nike analog nike bounce nike compact nike digital and nike hybrid faces on your apple watch plus you can change your apple watch face just as you can change your lock screen and a home screen based on the focus mode you are in there are some great new additions to sleep tracking on apple watch with watch os 9. the app watch will now use the gyroscope as well as the heart ray sensor to monitor you throughout the night and track your core rem deep and awake sleep cycles beyond that it can show comparison graphs on the iphone inside of the health app that'll match your heart rate and respiratory rate compared to how you were sleeping finally apple has a new way to get in and out of sleep mode so here we're in sleep mode already we're going to put the apple watch asleep you can see we've got the sleep facing on it's very dim to get out of this you used to have to twist the digital crown now you must hold the digital crown to be able to access your watch when you're sleeping that way it doesn't inadvertently wake up in the middle of the night and wake you up apple added a whole new app with watch os 9 that's the medications app medications will help you track your medications and vitamins that you take every day or every few days or every week or however often it may be it'll include alerts on your watch to let you know when it's time to take your medication it'll let you know which ones you've longed you can view any of your medications and view your schedule when you should take them or manually log them one by one it's really easy to set this up over on your iphone and keep track of it here on your apple watch before getting into that i have to call out one of our sponsors adorama apple insider followers can save literally hundreds of dollars on apple products by applying code ap insider at checkout but you must follow these steps to get these great deals use the link down below in the description or go to prices.appleinsider.com and follow any of the links on the adorama column for the products that you're shopping for thanks again to adorama for sponsoring this video now let's get back to our content apple has basically entirely redesigned the compass app here in watchos 9. first you can zoom in and out of the actual view to view three different versions of the compass app so here's one version of it if we use the digital crown we can scroll up and i can exit the second version that i can't show because it has my longitude and latitude and then the last version again that has my bearing there as where i'm facing you can pull up this menu here on the left with additional information you can tap on done there i can tap in the lower left hand corner where i can access any waypoints that i've added so i have my parked car or anything like that and this supports backtrack backtrack allows you to head out into the wilderness and keep track of where you're going that way you can always find your way back this is very handy for hikers if you've ever gone out west and wander around a little bit it can definitely be scary so backtrack is a really cool new feature that i'm excited for here in watchos9 for women the cycle tracking app has been updated and it can now alert you if you have an irregular pattern for your cycle so if you haven't had one in a certain period of time you've had them too frequently or any other irregularities that the cycle app is able to detect after you've logged quite a bit of data you'll get an alert about those just to make sure you're on top of it one of the biggest apps to get upgrade is the workouts app and there's a serious ton of changes to talk about with workouts so first up there are new workout views so if i choose something here they do decent amount how about indoor cycle let's go ahead and start this workout now we can scroll using the digital crown to go to some different views this one here is the new heart rate zones it can show you your max and resting heart rate to create personalized zones for during your workout or you can set zones manually inside of the settings here to get the ones that you want so as you get your heart rate up you can move into those different zones how much calories you're burning and everything else you can kind of focus on your biggest burn ones from your kind of starting out your warm ups to your cool downs and everything in between or if you're pushing things just too hard if we keep scrolling down we can see other views in this this is another new one this is the activity rings view you can see your actual activity earnings while in your workout very handy you don't have to jump to your home screen or lock screen or your watch face anything like that to check your rings you can see them while in the workout seems you know small but it's been a problem at least for me some workouts have additional views for example this outdoor run you can see we have our zones there this is a new pacer one that has additional information you can see things like splits segments and that kind of stuff if we scroll down we have the elevation face now this one will show your max elevation as well as your total gain and it can visualize them this will apply for outdoor runs outdoor cycle outdoor wheelchair run pace hiking outdoor walk and outdoor wheelchair walk pace you can see it visualized there along the top and if we keep scrolling we have our activity rings that we looked at before if we take an activity like outdoor run and tap on the ellipses there you can see we can choose those different types of workouts that existed before but now we have so many more options you can scroll down and see all these different types of workouts including custom workouts you can create custom workouts with a repeating set of intervals based on time distance or an open goal jump into here you can see i want to work recovery and you can just keep repeating those before adding a cool down at the end you can have the length anything that you want to set and it'll automatically walk you through this using the updated pacer now if we go up and choose something else just like maybe the open one i do this one quite a bit i can choose my alerts that i get so my paste ones all of these can be customized now and if we go back workout views you can see we have the views we can preview them right here at the top or i can edit views and choose and customize all of these so you can see we have our different views we have our heart rate ones and you can choose whether or not to include them just with this little toggle here so on or off based on what i actually want to see in my workouts you can see there's the updated elevation one there's a ton of different ones here you just choose which ones you want or don't want to show up in your workout and you can do these on a per workout basis so set them for running for cycling anything like that for running it'll also now monitor stride length ground contact time and vertical oscillation for multi-sport tracking this has a bunch of new enhancements including for triathlons and duathlons it can automatically move between swimming cycling and running and will modify transitions between each of those legs it'll automatically move between them and you don't have to manually do it for pool swim this can now automatically detect when you're using a kickboard if you're an apple fitness plus user and you're using your apple watch with apple fitness plus there will be new on-screen call outs that alert you about things like when you should have high intensity or be cooling down been testing that for a while as well and it works really nicely when i'm using it with the apple tv you also have the new found ability to race yourself if you take the same path time and time again you can compare your results to how you were actually racing last time and can get pacer alerts to let you know if you're falling behind your previous rate the calendar app was updated allowing you to add a new event directly into the calendar and you can change the view options including up next day or list view when you're going and adding a new event you can tap the plus button add your title location when it is and everything else that you need right here directly from your apple watch without having to grab your iphone the reminders app was updated now you can go ahead and edit these reminders that you've added you can add notes change the title add a date time repeat tags and locations a bunch of information that you couldn't add before directly from the apple watch in the podcast app there's a few changes to talk about here too so first you now have the ability to search so you can search for your favorite podcast like homekit insider if i had to suggest one so you can search for your podcast you can also use the new listen now tab where you can find new and exciting things to listen to so there's a list to choose from a bunch of ways to find new stuff to listen to or the up next queue that you were already listening to once you just went to continue where you left off again like that homekit insider podcast and the last thing you can do with the updated podcast app is follow and unfollow shows for any 22 year old or older that's been diagnosed with afib you can now see afib history you can get weekly notifications with how much time you've spent in afib highlights to show what days and times your afib is at its highest and it'll track lifestyle factors that may contribute these lifestyle factors include exercise sleep weight alcohol and more that are all tracked inside of the health app and you can share your results with a pdf to your doctor for further discussion another useful new feature is low power mode you can tap on the battery indicator here inside a control center and you'll see how much battery life you have remaining but below that you'll see low power mode this used to be power reserve mode power reserve mode was replaced with this updated low power mode when you go to enable low power mode your apple watch will automatically slow things down in the background it'll turn off background sensors such as your heart rate monitoring and spo2 measurements and it'll turn things lower such as how frequently your watch is checking in via wi-fi or cellular it'll still work via bluetooth and you'll still have notifications coming in from your phone but if you're not near your phone some things may be delayed but you can drastically improve the battery life of your apple watch when low power mode is enabled you can turn it on right here from control center and just another tap you can turn it off again when you're ready to conserve battery life you should be able to get around twice the battery life with low power mode turned on depending on the apple watch model you have build as an accessibility feature you can mirror your apple watch to your iphone it's helpful if you're trying to explain somebody what to do or just for technical assistance when actively using your apple watch there are new redesigned notifications that come in that only pop in on part of your screen instead of taking over your entire screen there'll be a small little banner right at the top to not inconvenience you as you're still actively using your watch the dock of apple watch has been updated and will now show applications that are actively running inside of the background though you can still go into settings and changes to your favorites if you'd prefer apple watch cellular models will now support international roaming that's also a new feature here with apple watch and watch os 9. there's support for bluetooth keyboards on apple watch and cardio recovery is tracked in the health app over on iphone so that wraps it up that is a lot of changes people i am particularly excited about the changes to watch faces as well as the redesigned notifications when you're using a watch it's massively improved compared to that full thing taking over the screen i like what apple has done here and i'm really excited for the new apple watches as well stay tuned to apple insider for all of the details on apple's newest wearables you\n"