Full transcript of “10 MAJOR Changes Coming to Your Apple Watch // WatchOS 26”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:02 [Music] This is Watch OS 26. No, not Watch OS 12. Apple is actually going from watch OS 11 all the way up to 26. They're unifying their phone operating system, iOS, their computer operating system, MacOSS, uh, iPad OS, and even Vision OS, which is the operating system for their crazy VR headset. And it's all going to correlate with the upcoming calendar year. So, think of it similar to how you can buy a new car with the upcoming calendar year for the model. Uh, all of these operating systems are going to be associated with the next upcoming calendar year going forward. And in my
0:48 mind, I actually think that this seems a lot more logical. Each of these are highly likely to be finalized in the fall or in late 2025. So, it doesn't really make sense for them to be called the 2025 operating system if we're almost done with that year. But Thursday, Apple moved watch OS 26 into a public beta. And I wanted to take a few minutes just to go over everything that's new. I mean, I guess I shouldn't say everything that's new. We'll go over the new design, workout buddy, uh, workout media, some of the changes that are coming to the workout app, smart stack hints, uh, some updates to the messaging app, the new notes app, which I'm excited about, uh, new watch faces, and a few other features. Uh, one new feature that we'll talk about for sure,
1:34 uh, and I actually think a feature that a lot of people are going to be excited about is this new, uh, flick to dismiss notifications gesture. And I'll make chapters for all of this below. So, if there's something in particular that you want to check out, you can just click below and see that in action, or feel free to sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and learn about all of this stuff. Let's start with a new design which is probably the most obvious change to watch OS 26. Uh Apple is calling it liquid glass. I think it's probably most noticeable if you are using one of the new watch faces that incorporates it. Uh or potentially if you click into the uh
2:20 control center, you're going to notice that all of the new buttons have this new style. And I should actually say that this new style is actually used throughout all of the operating systems within the Apple ecosystem. So iOS on your iPhone will have this similar liquid glass style updates. Uh you'll also see notifications, uh app icons, uh and you'll see this liquid glass in other places throughout iOS. I'm actually switching my watch face to the new photos watch face just because I do think that it seems to work a little bit better with this new liquid glass theme. Uh you'll probably see my youngest kids photos throughout this video uh as he slowly transitions from shorter hair to
3:06 super long-haired wild kid. Uh but I like how this time is kind of subtly placed partially behind the subject matter within these photos. Uh but moving on, I do think that a lot of you guys might be interested in this new workout buddy feature that is new to watch OS 26. So uh now watch OS 26 is actually analyzing your workouts in near real time and it will offer little pep talks during the exercise. So when you start, you get a little bit of a message. >> Way to get your Saturday run started. With over six miles logged this week, you're crushing it. your 7-day training load is well above your 28-day baseline. Time to keep the momentum going. >> Uh you'll see messages during key
3:51 moments and milestones during a workout, and you'll have a nice little summary afterwards. So, here's what that sounds like. >> Solid effort into your outdoor run. You did 1.4 miles in 24 minutes 7 seconds, and you averaged 17 minutes, 1 second per mile. Now, currently you have three voices you can choose from and these are AI generated voices. >> Way to get your workout started. >> But if they do sound familiar, it's because the female voice is designed to mimic Sam Sanchez and the male sounding voice is designed to mimic Jaime Ray
4:36 Hartsworn. both of which are Apple Fitness Plus trainers. Now, Workout Buddy currently works during outdoor runs, indoor runs, indoor walks, outdoor walk, outdoor ride, high-intensity training intervals or hit workouts, traditional strength training, and functional strength training. And Apple didn't specifically list this activity, but I did notice that Workout Buddy was working for indoor cycling workouts as well. and workout buddy announcements are currently in English and they play only on AirPods with H1 or later chipsets when connected to the Apple Watch or the iPhone, but can also play on third-p party Bluetooth headphones when that's connected to your iPhone. And these are some of the things that are probably going to be updated or
5:24 changed as we move from the public beta build to the final release candidate and over the following few months as Apple expands this feature. We're kind of nonchalantly thinking about Workout Buddy telling us how we're doing in real time. Uh and under the hood, there's actually some wild stuff going on here. Uh, Apple Health is having to know all of your workout history, which if you actually think about it, is absolutely massive. You keep in mind that your Apple Watch is actually taking readings of your health and your heart rate and your your pace that you're running. All of that stuff is happening just about like once every second that you're doing a workout. And it's analyzing all of this stuff and what you're doing in real time as you're exercising. It's actually telling you about interesting key
6:11 moments in milestones in real time as well. So, I will just say that, you know, if you've played around with other AI systems, you know that this is incredibly difficult stuff to pull off. Most AI systems really struggle with large contexts and no one is really doing anything like this in real time. As far as I can tell, there are definitely uh a lot of new companies on the market that can wait for you to finish a run and you can take that data or small summaries of that information, pass it into some sort of LLM, and it might be able to give you some general commentary or insights on your run. But, you know, I don't think that that's what Apple is doing here. That's definitely not real time. And, you know, a system like that is definitely not aware of your entire workout history for context. So, as far as I can tell, you know, no
6:56 other company is doing anything like this currently. And I think if we see issues or bugs was probably going to be something along the lines of the Apple Health system and the large amount of context that's needed to be provided to this model uh being cut down or being summarized or shortened. [Music] And yes, you know, maybe this insight is not for you. Maybe you don't want to have someone talking in your ear while you're doing your workout. I get that. Uh, you can turn this off. You can turn it on specifically based on the type of workouts as well. So, you might not want to hear it for your walks, but you might want to hear it for updates on your outdoor runs or vice versa. You can do all of that in here within settings. And just as an aside, there are a number of
7:43 AI features that are built into this new watch OS 26. It isn't just this one particular item, although I will say that this is kind of one of the bigger and more obvious features. Uh, and it really is the first time, as far as I know, that AI is really being used heavily within the Apple Watch ecosystem. And this AI feature does require that you have Bluetooth headphones connected and that your connected iPhone is an iPhone that has Apple intelligence. So, that's iPhone 15 Pro, the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and all of the iPhone 16 models. So, that might be bad news for you if you do have an older phone. Uh, good news is that the data being analyzed here is done on their secure cloud servers or on the local
8:28 device. It's not being like saved or shared on the internet somewhere. Now, while we're talking about the workout app, there are also a few minor updates in here. One of which is very obvious. You can see that the UI of this app looks completely different. In each corner here, you can actually navigate to uh edit your workout view metrics. You can change the type of workout. So, you can change it to something like goals like uh you know, 7 mile run or you can actually have a custom workout in here. Uh the pacer option or race routes, which is kind of like racing previous efforts on a specific route that you've done in the past. Uh before you'd click onto these three dots and you'd end up getting this list that you could actually filter. It was it seemed really confusing to me personally. Uh
9:14 but you can also set alerts based on your pace, your heart rate, your cadence, your power, time splits, or your track lapse. Uh and then there's this workout media button here on the bottom left. And workout media is something new here as well. You can now select whatever media you'd like directly from the workout app. And if you use Apple Music, it can also choose the best playlist based on your workout and what music you'd like to listen to. And then you have the option to have it automatically start when you start your workout, which I think is nice. And it's not just music. You can listen to podcasts or specific playlist, whatever you'd like within here. [Music] Now, in addition to the fancy looking
10:01 new liquid glass smart stack here, the smart stack will now hint at functionality. And this is another spot that the AI algorithm is being used to look at your situation and highlight a smart stack item that it thinks would be highly correlated to what's going on in your environment. So, for example, if you open your camera app on your iPhone, uh you'll see a smart stack show the remote camera options. Or if you are consistently driving down to the trails to go for a run at the same time of day, your smart stack might show the workout app hint. So, smart stacks are getting smarter. Now, Watch OS 26 has something new in
10:48 the messages app called smart actions. And you might have seen this on your iPhone if you have an updated iPhone. Uh but if someone is asking you, hey, where are you? Uh your Apple Watch might actually suggest sharing your location for the next hour. Uh the message app can also transcribe incoming text messages into your preferred language of choice. And similarly, it can also translate your outgoing reply for whoever the person is that you're having a conversation with. Now, I actually use the notes app for, you know, pretty much everything in my life. Uh, and I love the fact that I can access those notes on my laptop or my smartphone or a different computer if I go to a different computer and I'm signed into my Apple account. Uh, but notes are now coming to your Apple Watch, which I
11:35 actually think is great. Um, and while I'm I don't think that I'm going to spend a lot of time like typing on my Apple Watch for some sort of super long note, uh, you can definitely use Siri to make those quick notes anytime you want to. >> I need to add more B-roll to this video. Nailed it, Siri. Crushed that. But if you are working on a note and you're on your laptop or a different device, uh, that note will actually get highlighted in that new Smart Stack hints feature that I was just talking about previously. [Music] One minor little thing that I think is
12:20 helpful, uh, watch faces are now organized by groups. So, when you are scrolling through new different watch faces, you'll just notice the the organization is a little bit cleaner. Uh, I'm actually really interested in the photos watch face, which will shuffle images based on the featured content, but there's tons of different groups of watch faces in here for you to scroll through and explore. [Music] Finally, there's a very cool new gesture that I actually think is going to be used fairly regularly. The flick to dismiss gesture is new to watch OS 26. So, if you end up getting a notification or an alert, you can just quickly flick your wrist to dismiss it. It's actually
13:06 pretty handy. Uh, flicking your wrist will also take you back to the app screen at any time if you're kind of deep within menus. Uh, or if you're within the app screen, flicking your wrist will take you back to your normal watch face. It's very cool. Uh, I find it very helpful. Uh, especially if you've got multiple things in your hand and you just need to do a quick gesture to put your watch back where it's supposed to be. Now, there's a ton of other features in Watch OS 23. Uh, for example, you can now screen phone calls from your watch. Uh, in addition to that, there's a new hold assist where your phone can alert you when you're off of hold and ready to talk to an actual person. All of that is available and to be seen on your Apple Watch. Uh, there's also a new accessibility feature called live listen where you can actually read
13:52 realtime captions of whatever your iPhone hears. So, you can imagine like putting this in some sort of conference call or meeting and being able to read captions, which could be extremely helpful, especially if you struggle with hearing or have some sort of hearing impairment. Uh, there's also a subtle automatic volume adjustment, which I think is super nice. And then there's just a ton more within here. I'm actually really only just scratching the surface of all the features that are new in watch OS 26. And all of it I find very interesting. To me, it feels like AI or Apple intelligence or artificial intelligence, whatever you want to call it. I think it's slowly making its way deeper and deeper into the Apple Watch, which I'm really excited to see. And yet, I don't think that any of these changes really feel that massive to me.
14:38 Uh I don't think that it's something where you upgrade your operating system from watch OS 11 to watch OS 26 and you're going to feel super lost or anything like that. You still go into the control center the same way. Uh the buttons on the control center look different. Yes, they have the liquid glass, you know, makeover to them, uh but they still function and operate in the same way. And I'm a fan of how this watch OS and, you know, all of these new features are available to any watches that have the hardware to support it, unlike some brands who tend to hold back software features for their higherpriced products. Uh but remember when the Apple Watch Series 9 was released and Apple doubled the number of neural cores within that watch within their system
15:25 and package processor which allowed the double tap item or the new double tap gesture. Uh if we look at the list of supported devices for watch OS 26, it might surprise you to see that this new software is supported on devices all the way back to the Apple Watch Series 6. But some of these new gestures, this new flick to dismiss gesture is only going to be available on that Apple Watch Series 9 and newer devices and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 in newer devices. So, it seems like that software feature requires the newer hardware. Again, to me, it feels like Apple is really trying to make all of this available to as many devices as possible. But what do you guys think? Is there, you know, anything in here that is particularly interesting to you? You know, I actually think that
16:13 this simple like flick to dismiss gesture is actually going to be the feature that most of us will use most with this update. I'm also, you know, oddly excited to have notes on my watch, which I know is a small thing. It's just an app that I tend to use a lot. Uh, and I'm sure that Apple is going to have a ton more details for us in the fall when they typically reveal new hardware. Uh, and I'm super excited. Uh, so let me know what you guys think. let me know in the comment section. Comment section is just below the video here somewhere. Uh it's right below the like button and the subscribe button down there somewhere. But either way, fancy new Apple Watch or no watch at all. Uh I really do hope that you guys are getting out there, getting after it, and we will see you
17:01 guys on the next one.
