If you’ve just unboxed a new Apple Watch this morning, there’s a whole host of tips and tricks that can help you get the most out of your new outfit. Below you can find tips on our favorite Apple Watch features for health, activity, personalization, and more.
Setting up your Apple Watch activity circles
For many people, the Apple Watch is first and foremost a fitness-oriented, wearable watch. The key to this is a trio of rings, each represented by a different color: red for movement, green for exercise, and blue for standing.
By default, the green exercise ring closes when you record 30 minutes of strenuous activity, the blue rolling or rest ring closes when you move for at least 1 minute of 12 different hours, and the Red rolling ring closes when you reach your personal goal of active calories burned in a day.
This year, however, Apple added the ability to customize your workouts and resistance goals for the first time. You may be recovering from an injury, and 12 hours of standing combined with 30 minutes of exercise is too much for your body to handle. People have also asked Apple to build rest days into the Apple Watch ring system, and that feature at least gives users more control over their goals.
Here’s how to change your movement, exercise, and position goals with watchOS 7:
- On your Apple Watch, open the Activity app
- Scroll down the page and look for the “Change Goal” button.
- Use the + or – buttons to adjust your goals, or use the digital crown
- Press “OK” to confirm your changes.
The exercise ring can be lowered or raised in intervals of five, to a minimum of 10 minutes or a maximum of 60 minutes. The goal of standing can be changed in one hour intervals, up to a minimum of 6 hours. You cannot increase the stand goal beyond the default 12 hour mark.
Customizing your watch face
The centerpiece of your Apple Watch is the watch face. On your watch face, you can add information known as complications, such as weather, activity data, heart rate information, and more. The easiest way to make an Apple Watch face is the Apple Watch app on iPhone.
You can find the complete library of watch faces in the “Face Gallery” tab of the app, and as you build them you can add faces to your personal collection. Once you’ve created multiple watch faces, you can switch between them from your Apple Watch, making it easy to adapt to different scenarios on the fly.
App Store Apple Watch
You can find apps designed specifically for Apple Watch in the watchOS App Store. Just press the digital crown on your Apple Watch and search for the App Store icon. Here, you can easily find and install dedicated Apple Watch apps without using your iPhone at all.
Share your activity
One of the ways I like to stay motivated with my Apple Watch is by sharing my activity data with my friends and family. So you can see when your friends are finishing their workouts, what progress they’ve made towards their goals, and when they’re earning new rewards.
To share your Apple Watch activity data with other people, follow these steps:
- Open the Fitness app on your iPhone
- Tap the share icon in the lower right corner
- Press the “+” button in the top corner
- Start typing a name and then tap the name you want to add. If the other person has an Apple Watch, the name will turn red
- Hit the Send button, then wait for your friend to accept your activity request. Once the request is accepted, you will receive a notification on your Apple Watch.
Establish health surveillance systems
The Apple Watch is not only useful for purposefully tracking your fitness progress, but also for passively monitoring your progress in the background.
Fall detection
One of these functions, called fall detection, uses the gyroscope and accelerometer to detect if you have fallen and, more importantly, if you have fallen and cannot get up. By default, fall detection is disabled for users under 65, but you can manually enable it by following these steps:
- Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone
- Type SOS Emergency
- Look for the drop detection button
- Apple warns that more physically active users can trigger fall detection even if you haven’t fallen. This is due to high impact activity, and can appear like a fall.
- Tap Confirm
Coeur
In the Apple Watch app on iPhone, you can also activate a series of functions that will allow your Apple Watch to help take care of your heart. Just open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and search for the Heart category. In this section you can enable the following features:
- Install the ECG app to take your Apple Watch’s electrocardiograms (series 4 and later)
- Establish cardio fitness levels and notifications, which are an important indicator of your overall health
- Irregular Rhythm Notifications to be notified when Apple Watch identifies multiple heart rhythms that may be atrial fibrillation
- Elevated heart rate notifications to receive a notification when Apple Watch detects a heart rate that increases to a certain level while you appear inactive
- Low heart rate notifications to receive a notification when Apple Watch detects a heart rate below 50 BPM for 10 minutes
Blood oxygen
If you’re using an Apple Watch Series 6, you can also take blood oxygen readings with your device. Apple Watch can also take action in the background so that you have data to think about regularly. You just need to open the Watch app on your iPhone, search for the Blood Oxygen category, activate the settings as you want.
Reign in your notifications
Apple Watch makes it easy to keep track of your notifications. Every time an app sends a “push” notification, you receive a tap on the wrist and hear a sound. For many people, however, it can be overwhelming and unnecessary.
To manage notifications on your Apple Watch, open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and choose the Notifications category. There you can see a list of apps and manage notifications if needed. I recommend that you limit notifications on your Apple Watch as much as possible, otherwise you might get overwhelmed.
Discover Apple Fitness +.
One of the latest features of Apple Watch is deep integration with APPple’s new Fitness + subscription workout service. Apple Fitness + provides access to a library of hundreds of on-demand workouts in popular categories such as running, cycling, HIIT, rowing, yoga, and more.
Apple Fitness + is deeply integrated with Apple Watch and shows live data from your Apple Watch on screen while you workout. Plus, if you’ve recently received a new Apple Watch, you probably have 3 months of free access to the service.
You can find Apple Fitness + in the Fitness app on your iPhone or Apple TV. It’s also available on iPad, and you can download it from the iPadOS App Store to get started.
Apple Watch Accessories
Finally, you could complement your new Apple Watch with accessories like charging docks and watch bands. Here are some of our favorites.
Best Apple Watch charging docks:
The best Apple Watch bands:
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