It’s official: watchOS 8 is coming.
Apple highlighted some of the new features and expanded capabilities coming to watchOS 8 during its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) Monday. Messaging directly from your watch gets some improvements; there’s a new sleep metric; and Apple has transformed the “Breathe” app into a “Mindfulness” app. But there’s nothing earth-shattering or truly novel coming down the pike.
The Mindfulness app will include Breathe exercises and new “Reflect” mindfulness prompts. Apple revealed that use of the Breathe app increased during the pandemic, which — considering the stress of the last year — is probably a good thing!
Need a mindful moment? Now you can find it in the Apple Watch.
Image: screenshot: apple
Apple’s sleep tracking through watchOS will now include your “respiratory rate,” which measures how deeply you’re breathing.
There’s a pretty new watch face called Portrait. You can already choose a photo as your watch face, which Apple said is the most popular option. Portrait puts the faces of people on the face of your watch in a dynamic, three-dimensional photo.
Put a face on your face.
Image: screenshot: apple
If you’re sending messages from your watch, there’s now an emoji and a .gif shortcut. And you can more easily share photos and edit message text from the Photos app.
There are more features coming, like the ability to set multiple timers (useful for workouts!), new workout types (Pilates and tai chi), Find capabilities, and more. But other than rebranding the Breathe app to Mindfulness, watchOS 8 is about adding new features to existing capabilities — not introducing a novel way you might use your Apple Watch.
It’s likely that watchOS 8 will come out in the fall with the debut of a new Apple Watch. Given the incremental nature of these updates, don’t hold your breath for a mind-blowing Apple Watch 7.