watchOS 26 – first run – I went for my first run on the new Apple OS
Apple’s new visual changes to tvOS, WatchOS and iOS are all subtle.
Last night, I secretly installed the new tvOS 26 and asked a family member what they thought, without giving them any indication of what I was asking them to consider. They didn’t even notice that the interface had the new Liquid Glass visuals.
So it is on watchOS. It looks similar. Once you know it’s changed and understand what to look for, it becomes obvious. The point is that the learning curve is nearly zero. Most things work mainly as before.
tvOS and iOS do look a tad nicer with the ‘glass’ screen elements, but on watchOS, the visual changes are fewer. At least that’s my first impression.
The Run
Once in the Workout app, the digital crown now scrolls through sports, with each sport choice occupying the entire screen. Here’s where it gets a bit different. There is now an option menu in each corner
- top left: Workout views (in-workout appearance)
- top right: Workout categories (Goals, Pacer, Route, Custom Structured Workouts)
- bottom left: Media
- bottom right: Alerts (Pace, heart rate, cadence, power, time, splits, laps, track lap, workout targets)
Workout Buddy
The whole point of my tests was to get Workout Buddy to annoy me and provide inane recommendations and motivational messages. I couldn’t get it to play, even though I had the language set to US-English, was using working earbuds to play music, the volume was turned up, and the iPhone was present. Maybe the AI was so clever it knew not to annoy me.
Workout Buddy is a first-of-its-kind workout experience on Apple Watch with Apple Intelligence that incorporates a user’s workout data and fitness history to generate personalised, motivational insights during their session.To offer meaningful inspiration in real time, Workout Buddy analyses data from a user’s current workout along with their fitness history, based on data like heart rate, pace, distance, Activity rings, personal fitness milestones, and more. A new text-to-speech model then translates insights into a dynamic generative voice built using voice data from Fitness+ trainers, so it has the right energy, style, and tone for a workout. Workout Buddy processes this data privately and securely with Apple Intelligence.Workout Buddy will be available on Apple Watch with Bluetooth headphones, and requires an Apple Intelligence-supported iPhone nearby. It will be available starting in English, across some of the most popular workout types: Outdoor and Indoor Run, Outdoor and IndoorWalk, Outdoor Cycle, HIIT, and Functional and Traditional Strength Training. [Apple]
Take Out
The workout app has become increasingly unique as new options have been added over the last few years. The corner menus are a better way to organise and access workout options. The aesthetics have hardly changed, but the elements that have changed do look a bit nicer.
Oh, and I was a little bit more excited about the new NOTES app. Numerous times over the last year, I kept telling Siri on my Watch to take a note, and it never did because the obvious software to have on a watch wasn’t there. Now it is. Here’s the first note I took. #hilarious.
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Apple watch / watchOS could literally blow the competition away, yet Apple continues to deliver the most needless software updates they could think of.
Like precision start on all models? Wearing anything other than an ultra is like a kids watch that gently counts down. To compete and take proper time measurements, you have to wear a brick on your wrist (ultra) to do so!?
How about new recovery insights like overnight HRV, sleep consistency scores, daily stress, etc to compete better with whoop.
Option to toggle higher heart rate sampling during the daily use.
Proper maps?
Feel a an even bigger Adobe watch sales decline incoming…
I hear ya!
Apple caters for lots of different customer segments. You and I are probably relatively similar in our needs but there are many others who, presumably, prefthings that work differently
Glad I’m not the only one haha
They produce the/one of the most accurate hear rate sensors in the market. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I would have thought recording proper overnight HRV ans 24hr sampling would only make a small dent in battery drain.
Wil be interesting to see what Pixel Watch 4 brings..
they do something like a spot reading every 15 minutes if your body is realtively still. something like that
to do what we want would proabbly only require ‘a bit’ more juice but there are lots of other people competing for their ‘bits more’. Apple just wants to maximise battery life and make compromises
it’s probably a bigger deal that we think. apple has alomsot certianly determined that its data sampling is accurate enough for its purposes.
Did you try using the Stryd app with OS 26? I would like to update the OS, but I’m not sure about the compatibility.
Thanks
not yet