Apple’s watchOS 11 is here with sleep apnea detection

Apple’s watchOS 11 is now available for download, brining sleep apnea notifications to users for the first time.

The publicly available version of watchOS 11 comes after several beta variants, with most of the new features focusing on health and fitness.

Perhaps the most interesting among them is sleep apnea detection, a feature that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved for Apple, and which the company announced at its Sept. 9 event. Apple says it uses the Watch’s accelerometer to detect small movements at the wrist during sleep, which are associated with interruptions in normal respiratory patterns (the metric Apple is using for this is called Breathing Disturbances). Apple then uses this data to notify the user if it identifies signs of sleep apnea.

The feature works on Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra, and is available in more than 150 countries and regions, including the U.S. and the EU.

Apple’s new watchOS 10 also brings a new app called Vitals, which gives the user an overview of their daily health status, as well as a metric called training load (visible in the Activity and Vitals apps) which shows how the user’s workouts are affecting their body over time.

Other new features include more customization options for Activity rings, a more personalized Smart Stack, the new Tides app for those who enjoy open water activities, and more info for users who log a pregnancy in the Health app.

New Watch Faces: The redesigned Photos face, Flux, and Reflections.
Credit: Apple

There’s a couple of new features that aren’t health or fitness related, too, such as the Translate app being available on the Watch for the first time, as well as three new Watch faces: a redesigned Photos face, the Flux face, and the Reflections face.

The new watchOS 11 is available as a free upgrade for Apple Watch Series 6 and later, provided you have an iPhone Xs or later running iOS 18.