If WhatsApp is your communication mode of choice then WatchChat 2 is an indispensable Apple Watch app. It lets you use WhatsApp on your Apple Watch, send and receive messages, play and record voice messages, and even view photos in full HD. It supports multiple keyboard layouts including FlickType, and more. Right on your wrist, you can interact with OpenAI’s large language model to do any number of things. You can create playlists in Apple Music, find locations in Maps, get answers to questions, and convert text to speech – useful if you’re busy and need an email read to you on the go. With no sign of Apple Intelligence on the Apple Watch, this is as good as it gets for AI on your wrist right now.
Boasting over 42 million users, Todoist is another great to-do list/calendar app designed to help you build habits and be more productive. Use your Apple Watch to check off or add tasks and see at-a-glance views of your upcoming day. If you haven’t seen a step-count complication when changing your Apple Watch face before, it’s because there isn’t one — not natively, at least. But if you have a third-party step-counter like Pedometer++, you’ll be able to see your steps every time you check your watch. Pedometer++ has options for daily progress, progress and steps, steps and distance, floors climbed and more. While you’ll be able to see your selected data at a glance, you can click on the complication to see all the movement data tracked by the pedometer app.
Even with the best water bottle, staying hydrated is hard when you’re facing a busy schedule, so this app will notify you if you’ve gone a little too long without water. The best Apple Watch apps will help you make the most of your high-tech smartwatch, whether you’ve got the latest Apple Watch 10 or something older. The app will track scores, estimate handicaps, and also act as a golf social media platform, which is really neat. The paid tier offers further analysis – but this is a great app that comes recommended. It will track sleep, recovery, readiness, training load, health trends, and HRV and allow you to keep a journal of your health habits, all in one place. Plus, the Workout API means the app will sync to a host of third-party apps – and other apps (such as TrainingPeaks and Runna) can import workouts into Workouts to complete.
All Apple Watch models, with the exception of Apple Watch Ultra and Ultra 2, have a built-in storage of up to 32GB, meaning you can add as many compatible apps as you want. Instead, get only the watchOS compatible apps that you’ll actually use. Headspace has practices, guided meditations, and courses you can use to manage worries of life and keep anxiety under control. You can use the very same tools built into the app to build resilience and become a better version of yourself. The free version of Pillow gives you a lot of useful information already. However, you need to be a premium member to access sound recordings, heart analysis, sleep notes, wakeup melodies, and sleep trends.
If you’re looking for a budgeting app for the Apple Watch that fits in with the rest of your Apple ecosystem, check out MoneyCoach. It takes the budgeting power you set up on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac — with unlimited accounts, category budgets, and personalized “smart” goals — and makes it wrist-friendly for everyday spending. Mehak has a master’s degree in communication and over ten years of writing experience. Her passion for technology and Apple products led her to iGeeksBlog, where she specializes in writing product roundups and app recommendations for fellow Apple users.
Lifehacker has been a go-to source of tech help and life advice since 2005. Our mission is to offer reliable tech help and credible, practical, science-based life advice to help you live better. If using Grid View (honeycomb pattern), lightly tap-hold the screen until the icons wobble, and then tap an app’s cross button to remove it.
I have sleep scores for all of those nights, not just the nights I wore an Apple Watch. This feature does not monitor daily or hourly blood pressure and can’t take momentary readings. Instead, it’s a detection mechanism that views blood pressure activity longitudinally. The idea behind the longer monitoring period is that a one-time blood pressure reading doesn’t offer a full picture of blood pressure health in the same way as a 30-day monitoring period.
Check your phone for a detailed analysis of your sleep on your iPhone as soon as you wake up. I have tried different third-party sleep apps for Apple Watch and iPhone, and Pillow Sleep takes the lead because it’s robust, comprehensive, and easy to use. You can connect WatchChat 2 with WhatsApp on your iPhone and have the WhatsApp messages delivered to your Apple Watch. You can also use WatchChat 2 to send and receive voice messages from group and individual chats, view pictures in HD, check friends’ statuses, and send emoji based on your current mood. Nano won’t give you the full Reddit experience, but it does let you do everything that matters. Browse Reddit as you normally might, using the force touch to control sort settings, upvote and downvote, and even post comments.
That’s because you can change the personality of the app to get forecasts that are a little bit different. Professional forecasts appear just like any weather app, but settings such as Snarky, Homicidal, and Overkill provide increasingly offensive summaries. The original iTranslate app is useful if you want to know how to say a particular phrase in a foreign language, but it’s not much use if you want to hold a conversation. ITranslate Converse solves that problem by listening to two different languages and translating between them, allowing two people who don’t speak the same language to hold a conversation. Not only will you see the spoken phrase translated into the target language on your Apple Watch, but it will also speak the phrase in that language too. The app will even flip the text upsides down, so you can show the translation to apps on apple watch the person you’re speaking to without twisting your arm.
Apple’s Hypertension Detection feature could be the reason you learn about your high blood pressure. The feature is available on the latest lineup of Apple Watches that the tech giant unveiled earlier this month, but it’s also available on later models updated to WatchOS 26. Scroll down to ‘Available apps’ and tap ‘Install’ next to any app you’d like to add. A complete and exciting library of apps has made the Apple Watch the powerhouse it is today—and that’s why knowing how to download new ones is an essential skill. As you move, Night Sky labels what you’re seeing and highlights constellations with clean illustrations for easier recognition.
With much better downloading and library controls than Apple, it also offers nifty features like Smart Speed to skip gaps, Voice Boost to remaster audio, and custom playlists. The Apple Watch app gives you quick access to episode and your playback controls, as well as support for standalone playback and cellular streaming. You don’t need your iPhone to stream music and podcasts from your wrist. As you drink water or other beverages throughout the day, you log the amount of liquid you’re consuming on your wrist. First, you need to download Water Reminder on either your iPhone or Apple Watch. The app gives you the option to sync with Apple Health for your age, weight and height information, or you can input that data manually.
It’ll find the best route for you combining all modes of transport, with live wait times and ETAs for buses and more. On your wrist, follow live directions and quickly set routes for favorite destinations like home and work. Money Coach is a popular budget planning and finance app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It helps you improve your financial habits with budgeting and saving tools, as well as individual smart budgets. You can keep as many accounts and budgets as you need, with smart goals customized towards you.
With the Pro version you also get the ability to add more than 5 of your subreddit subscriptions to the watch app, and you can favorite sub-reddits, create multireddits, and more. Even though the Apple Watch does have built-in sleep tracking, its data is not as comprehensive as AutoSleep, which brings a lot to the table. For one, it records naps, which isn’t something the built-in option offers. Heart Analyzer is one of the best Apple Watch apps for people who want to keep a close watch on their cardio-health.
The Apple Watch companion lets you quickly start recording your workouts, with at-a-glance data on your splits, time, heart rate, and more. Use your Apple Watch to track your movement, journey, and energy expenditure as you run, then upload your efforts for the world to see. The SmartGym Apple Watch app is an award-winning workout app that’s so good it even features in Apple’s own TV adverts for the Watch. SmartGym offers follow-along workouts housed directly on your wrist, using AI to create personalized workouts for you. There are custom timers for specific exercises, with over 690 pre-installed exercises replete with animations. You can exercise without your iPhone present, tracking your heart rate, distance and calories, while the session data will count towards closing your rings for the day.
A former Apple Watch App of the Year winner, Gentler Streak is an app for workouts, well-being, and sleep with a focus on a softer, lighter approach to health and wellness. It’s designed to make regular exercise sustainable, with no guilt-edged streaks. It features sleep analysis, menstrual cycle tracking, activity, and more, with over 140 activities to choose from. You can see workouts and stats live on your wrist as you go, with real-time tracking of heart rates with a focus on not overdoing it. Nike Training Club is a popular health and fitness app featuring home workouts, yoga, mindfulness, high-intensity interval training, and more. Strap on the Apple Watch app and it’ll track sets and reps during workouts, as well as offering timers and recovery tracking.
That said, third-party apps open up new possibilities on your wrist. With the Apple Watch’s more limited SSD space — and the cost of some apps — you won’t want to download just any app at random. Also, don’t hesitate to have a look at the best Apple Watch accessories and the best Apple Watch complications you can get to further enhance your experience. It guides you through hiking, cycling, and mountaineering adventures worldwide. With its precision vector maps, you can explore trails, bike lanes, via ferratas, and protected natural spaces with up-to-date details.
There are a couple of features missing here, such as the ability to comment or to read comments, and the ability to scrub through a video’s timeline. But for a casual YouTube watching experience, WatchTube is pretty good and gets the job done. Headspace is a 100% mindfulness app packed with features that help you relax, manage stress, release tension, and regain focus. Add it to your Apple Watch and iPhone, and use it for meditation whenever you’re in a bad mood. Pillow gives you a summary report of your sleep on the Apple Watch, which is fine considering that the watch’s screen is too small to fit a lot of information.
Considering going back to my Fitbit, as I feel I made an expensive mistake by buying this thing. Constellation-tracking apps have been around almost as long as smartphones have had gyroscopes, and Night Sky brings that experience to your wrist. The Apple Watch version works just like the phone apps, using the gyroscope to point you toward stars, planets, and constellations. Welltory is an Apple Watch app focused on heart rate variability (HRV) analysis. It offers insights into health by monitoring workouts, sleep, and blood pressure.
You can also see more detailed breakdowns of your heart rate during workouts, and there are customizable complications for your Apple Watch face. Calm is an app that needs very little introduction, as it’s one of the most popular sleep, meditation, and relaxation apps on the App Store. It features guided meditation for all levels of experience to help you get on top of your mental health.
The app doesn’t just aim to track your sleeping habits, it tries to figure out how to make your sleep better based on that information. It tracks things that Apple sleep cannot, like snoring and coughing, various nighttime disruptions that wake you, or heart rate dips. It helps you find a bedtime and wake-up time better suited to your circadian rhythm. Once it’s gathered enough data, it has a “scientifically-informed,” personalized AI coach that figures out how you can improve your shuteye. User reviews put it at 4.7 stars, so clearly it’s doing something right. It’s no secret that the Apple Podcasts app leaves a lot to be desired, and Overcast is unanimously understood to be the best alternative.