It’s that time of year again, WWDC – Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference, where Apple outlines their software platform changes across all their devices. This annual event in June is essentially the start of the Apple release waterslide that begins now, and ends in September with the release of new hardware devices. Effectively, Apple announces the bulk of the new software features here in June, and then these end up on new phones, watches, and more, which typically start shipping in September. Of course, not every single feature that’ll be seen this fall will be announced here, they often save Apple-specific ones for announcement with new watches and new hardware.
Whereas the features here are typically focused on how 3rd party developers can leverage them. So we see bits like new application interfaces, programming interfaces, and more being announced. Plus features that might need more user beta feedback for the next 3 months.
The first big announcement is the renaming of WatchOS to be year-based (e.g. 2026), as opposed to version-based. Thus, the new WatchOS version will be WatchOS 26, akin to new cars being named for the following year (2026 in this case). The same is true for iOS and all the other Apple platforms.
Apple is introducing new universal design across all their devices (phone, desktop, tablet, and yes, watch). This new language is called Liquid Glass, which Apple says will reflect with light (or the appearance of it), and makes menus and such appear to be encased in glass and float about background elements. Effectively like a liquidy glass surface that all the user interface elements float on.
With that, let’s talk about the WatchOS 26 features. After all, there are tons of other sources for all the iOS/etc features.
What’s New: WatchOS 26
With WatchOS 26, Apple brings Apple Intelligence to the Apple Watch for the first time. The first feature that’ll leverage Apple Intelligence is Workout Buddy, which effectively acts as a blend of always-positive Apple Fitness+ trainer/coach, and typical workout audio notifications that most watches on the market already have. This continues the trend of fitness features being the ‘main thing’ for Apple Watch, in terms of announcements at WWDC. Albeit, at a slightly less performance-oriented level than the past 2-3 years.
However, before we get to that, Apple has added a slate of other features to WatchOS 26, so let’s just run through them real quick:
– New Liquid Glass design style, including translucence across the UI
– Added automatic volume adjustment, changing notifications levels based on ambient noise (e.g., if in a noisy place, it’ll increase notification levels)
– Added wrist flick option to mute calls and do other quick actions
– Added automatic call screening feature (seen/announced too for iOS 26)
– Added hold assist for calls, which will keep calls on hold (detecting background music), and notify you when a human arrives
– Added live language translations in Messages app on watch
– Added configurable widgets
– Added automatic smart actions to Messages, such as sharing your location if a conversation implies it wants it
– Added Notes app to Apple Watch, letting you see your existing notes, and add to them
– Revamped Smart Stack again, to be better at predicting things. For example, if you walk into your gym as part of a routine, it learns to offer the Workout app when you do so
– Added Personalized Workout Media, music feature will automatically offer a playlist to ‘fit’ the workout (e.g. based on intensity)
– Added Controls Widget API for developers
– Added Workout Buddy for workout encouragement (English only at launch)
– Revamped Workout UI entirely
– As part of Workout UI revamp, made custom workouts & racing bits more accessible
Ok, with all those items listed, let’s dig into the Workout app and Workout Buddy pieces specifically. Starting off on the Workout App, you’ll see a revamped interface that shows the various per-sport options in the corners of the UI.
You’ll see down at the bottom there’s the music option. When you open this, by default there’s an option to autoplay media. However, within that, there are actually two options. The first is to automatically select a playlist for you, and the second lets you specify exactly what you want.
Meanwhile, back on the main Workout Screen, if you tap in the upper right corner, you can quickly access structured workouts, goals, pacer, and more.
Ok, with all that sorted out, it’s time to actually start the workout and look at Workout Buddy. From here, you’ll get audio encouragement from the start. The voices are customizable from a few options, and Apple says these are modeled after the ‘encouraging’ style seen in their Apple Fitness+ instructors. Specifically, two different instructors that you can choose from, though they are only identified as ‘Voice 1’ and ‘Voice 2’ at present, in the Workout Buddy settings.
Still, the female voice is a generative replica of Sam Sanchez, while the male voice is a replica of Jamie-Ray Hartshorne. They are both designed to mimic everything from the voice itself, to the various phrases and terms that both those Fitness+ trainers might use during their sessions normally.
The entire Workout Buddy feature is then effectively divided up into three core phases:
- The Pep Talk: This phase occurs at the beginning of the workout, just after pressing start.
- Alerts & Milestones: This occurs throughout the workout, and will add context to your existing alerts (e.g. the ones that have long been available to configure), while the milestones will be new – things like passing through a given distance or elevation.
- The Walk Off: This occurs after finishing/saving the workout, where you’d normally (and still do) see the summary stats. Here it’ll give you a short audio overview of the workout, while also giving you more context.
The key thing Apple is trying to add here is ultimately context. Stats at the base level are a dime a dozen in the fitness industry. Instead, they’re trying to pull from all of your existing Fitness data to find nuggets that you might not otherwise know about, or wouldn’t consider.
These can include the following, as examples:
– “Fastest Mile Yet!”
– “You’ve climbed 2,000ft in elevation.”
– “The last split was 8 minutes, 45 seconds”
– “So far this week you’ve closed all your workouts.”
– “You broke your all-time distance record!”
– “That’s the longest HIIT workout you’ve recorded. Keep up the great work!”
– “You did it, that was your fastest 5K yet!”
As you can see, it’s a bit of a blend of what we’ve seen in terms of typical lap splits, along with ones that are more aware of your general stats. Apple says this will also pull from their training load features they launched last year, as well as all your workout and fitness data, including aspects such as distances logged. Note that both the voices and the actual tidbits it says are all generative AI. While Apple has trained the model in terms of prompts and guardrails, it’s ultimately creating these insights on the fly on your watch. As one might guess, these will be positive-focused insights, as opposed to negative ones (as much fun as it might be to have an angry pessimistic coach voice).
Workout Buddy is available for the following sport types at launch, and can be disabled for any given sport type as well (for example if you want it just on running but not strength):
– Outdoor Run
– Indoor Run
– Indoor Walk
– Outdoor Walk
– Outdoor Ride
– High Intensity Interval Training
– Traditional & Functional Strength Training
And as noted, it’ll only be available in English at launch. Apple hasn’t specified timelines for other languages. It remains to be seen how Apple will balance between useful/encouraging, and “please just shut up and let me die on these final intervals by myself”.
Finally, it’s worth noting that Apple says that it’ll start understanding your routines, so when you go to the gym, it’ll automatically understand that, and show the Workout app, with the strength training sport automatically pre-selected, when you arrive at the gym:
And likewise, if you go out of cellular/WiFi range, your watch will also recommend starting a Backtrack session, so you can get back if you get lost. This whole concept is called Smart Stack Hints.
Finally, WatchOS 26 will be available for Apple Watch Series 6 and higher, including Apple Watch Ultra 1, Ultra 2, and Apple Watch SE (2nd Gen). This means all Apple Watches announced from September 2020, with the exception of Apple Watch SE (1st Gen), which was announced September 2020.
Stay tuned for more thoughts and real testing thoughts in the future once these reach public beta, which will typically be in the early to mid-July range.
Thanks for reading!
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Do you think they will ever make it so that the Workout app sorts the list by time and location based on previous workouts? My watch should know that I’m probably going to ruin if it’s Saturday morning and I’m at a trailhead where I’ve logged several runs rather than just show me a list that descends based on recent use.
I liked the logic from before WatchOS 11, where the workouts are sorted based on the number of times used. For example, I commute by bike a log and log most of those rides which is why before WatchOS 11 I always had outdoor cycling on the top of the list.
So they gave Strava’s Athlete Intelligence a voice?
I’m curious to see if something along the lines of sports metrics a la Garmin’s Training Readiness is coming!
It would be really disappointing if Apple doesn’t come up with something new.
Please not just a new subscription service with Fitness+…., although I wouldn’t put it past Apple.
I watched online. My impression was “boring, boring, OMG I HOPE I CAN TURN THAT OFF, boring, boring, time to walk the dog so I’ll skip VisionOS”. Nothing at all fitness related interested me at all. Even though I rarely use my Ultra for anything fitness related, I hope I can turn that Workout Buddy stuff off.
And Apple, where are my Topo maps?
But you still cannot create a native custom strength workout (weights reps etc)?
So at least in the presentation no TBT navigation in the workout app, no decent topo maps, still huge gaps in trails near me in Germany and France, no Running Power Zones, nothing new or better in the realm of fitness, workouts, wellness outside of uncanny AI voice junk.
I mean, Apple is eating the dust of WearOS and Huawei when it comes to fitness, health and wellness features is bad enough, but the biggest software and smartwatch company Apple even falling behind upcoming Huawei and WatchOS and even small Garmin (comparatively small that is), Polar and even Suunto in such kinda easy to implement features (compared to their other stuff) is a big let down.
So still no ability to have turn by turn routing within the Apple Watch workout app? It’s probably the one thing that would be so much more streamlined rather than have two apps to toggle between.
Not very exciting at all. A whole year to improve fitness chops and further increase the gap with competitors but instead, automated AI stuff no one likes.
All of this is looking like a preview of reasons that when the next AW comes out in September, battery life will still be “18 hours” – any bets?
This is the worst WatchOS update ever. It’s embarrassing that there’s no GPX import, and turn-by-turn navigation is missing from the workout app. Apple, you can’t be serious!
I hope the theme song for Workout Buddy is the same one as the “My Buddy” dolls from the 80s.
I’ve used my AW for a few years for workouts, but recently purchased a forerunner 265. I’m both impressed by how intuitive the Garmin interface is, and surprised by how many holes are in the Apple offering. I just didn’t realize how much better it could be until I tried something else. And it looks to me that Apple has nothing in the works to close that gap. Just fluff this year. It’s too bad, because the Garmin has nowhere near the phone integration that Apple does. But when I go out for a run, I take off my apple and put on my garmin. Shame.
What is the reason for the poor integration?
The EU has set its sights on Apple and finally sees the interaction between iPhone and Apple Watch as critical!
Why?
Because Apple does not provide interfaces that manufacturers such as Garmin, Polar, Suunto, Samsung…
can offer the same functions.
I can’t answer messages on the Garmin watch BECAUSE Apple doesn’t want me to, so that their AW has a unique selling point.
Politicians have been asleep here for far too long! Fortunately, the EU is finally waking up.
Still no HR broadcasting?
Ray, I didn’t catch it in the presentation, but can you find out if Workout Buddy requires a live connection to an iPhone? One of the nicest features of a cellular Apple Watch is the ability to leave your phone behind, but given that they are calling this an AI feature, I suspect it has to be tethered to work. Thanks!
No, it doesn’t require an internet connection.
The only feature which requires an internet connection is the dynamic music bits, if you choose that.
Maybe no internet connection, but:
Requires an Apple Intelligence–enabled iPhone nearby and Bluetooth headphones with device and Siri language set to English. Apple Intelligence is available in beta on all iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Thanks. I found that on Apple’s site after I posted my question. Feels like most of the new stuff is extension of iPhone based rather than specifically watch centric. I’ve noticed that they are starting to get into a 2 year cycle on their fitness features. WatchOS 9 gave sleep stages, HR zones, multi-sport, running form metrics, and custom workouts. 10 gave topo maps and power zones. 11 brought pausing the rings, effort rating, training load, vitals, and custom swim workouts. 26 now brings workout buddy, a new UI, and more flexible auto music start.
That said, it does feel like they missed some potential wins: Turn by turn (which could use a mapkit type thing that developers could use), phone mirroring for workouts other than bike (treadmill, elliptical, rower, etc.) or at least live activities, workout builder on iphone, recovery/strain/whatever metric, workout recommendations, HR broadcast, power display on fitness+. Workout Drop (picture the ability to share your workout plan with a group and sync up the start so that everybody is running/riding the same plan. Take it even a step further and it could show postion/gap info), Run/walk timer, Group challenges, or Health/Fitness on MacOS (which isn’t a watch thing, but would be very nice to have (along with Fitness+ on MacOS).
Unless they intend to announce on-device AI support for the new watches this fall, this release mostly feels like a lite release centered around echoing iPhone alerts. (plus Notes!)
This was a really, really bad keynote from a sports perspective. With the death of the iSmoothrun app, which was a major reason for my choice of using AW s my sports watch, I am now looking for an alternative.
The next Ultra is out in September, and there’ll be features we didn’t see in the keynote. They’ll offer mapping and turn by turn at some point. It’s just a question of when and how it’s implemented.
That’s not generally how Apple works. Yesterday and the rest of this week is for developers, and that’s when they announce new software features. Turn by turn in Workout would have been announced yesterday, since the hardware to do turn by turn has existed for years. My Ultra can do turn by turn now, just not while recording an activity like a real sportswatch can (my Epix 2, for example). Hardware is in September, and it’s very unlikely they’ll announce a new software feature then. They’ll be releasing XOS 26 at that point, so they need the bugs worked out before then.
I suspect that the same people who insist of getting a trophy for participating want an always positive coach who tells you how special you are, even if you are just slacking. Seriously, this buddy can go where the sun doesn’t shine!!
And if Liquid Glass is just optics and does nothing to increase battery life, then it’s for people who spend too much time staring at their devices for more than just getting the information it provides!
So actually nothing new that would entice me to change back to Apple.
Workout buddy looks like somebody from Apple saw those memes on Instagram where Apple Watch is shown as overly encouraging and Garmin watches are shown as condescending and downright abusive and thought “What if we lean more into this?”
This is a really disappointing update. I’ll probably start looking at my Garmin again…
I have always liked my AWU for the smart watch stuff and especially phone free LTE music/calls etc. And it has “just enough” sports stuff to be useful. If Apple could just stop improving battery tech just to enable the addition of more feature whilst keeping the battery life the same and hold the features (or allow some to be turned off) to extend the battery that would go a long way. I know they do this a bit (AWU increased battery capacity compared to AW and there is a low power mode) but getting the battery to 7 days would be great. Fitness coaching is interesting – the Apple apps themselves do very little other than training load, closing rings and now workout buddy. It does support structured workouts from TP or even HealthFit (which is great) which again goes a long way. So give me longer GPS life (and battery overall), routing and a cheap bike screen (like the Wahoo RFLKT) that mirrors the watch data for triathlons (so your £1000+ phone that currently does this is not at risk) that perhaps even has a GPS chipset to off load some GPS duty (and hence battery) from the watch. Then I might give up my Fenix/Edge combination.
Great review, thanks a lot.
BTW, do I understand correctly, that currently there is no structure workout building on iPhone?
Is it possible to create threshold intervals targeting HR zones, from the watch itself or from apple health app?
Correct, at least from a native Apple standpoint.
But you can create structured workouts through a variety of 3rd party apps on the iPhone, and those do push to the Apple Watch just fine.
Do you know if Apple Workout app will finally measure distance for cross country skiing and roller skating? Or apple still thinks that during these workouts people are interested only in burned calories amount?
I can confirm that you are now able to track distance in the cross coutry skiing mode! Super annoying feature that has finally been fixed.
So, basically no real athlete focused features:
– no LHTR or any other automatic HR zones detection (still capped to 220-age xD)
– no recovery calculations
– no real training load
– no training load focus breakdown
– no suggested workout feature
– no topo maps
– no stress / body battery
– no ability to modify activity rings to something more useful than “you managed to stand up this hour 🎉”
…and the whole year of “development” of the workout features are new layout and ability to interrupt my workout with non-actionable talking.
I hoped they will add at least 2 first ones so I can finally fully switch to AWU from my Fenix. Now I am hoping that Garmin will finally introduce LTE to Fenix so I can switch to Garmin fully instead.
Disappointing.
Windows 95 anyone?
Thanks for the write up Ray. Could you find out if they will support “open ended steps” for structured workouts from TP? Garmin does and it allows you to put a block in a structured workout that has a duration/distance/etc suggestion but doesn’t end until the user hits lap. This is extremely useful for longer intervals so the user doesn’t get the “go” at a stop light.
You can see that Garmin is the only one that supports it here: link to help.trainingpeaks.com
Thanks, Ray – any word on whether the VO2 max calculation has changed in watchOS 26?
link to reddit.com
On a completely unrelated note, and only posted here since I couldn’t find a better place to inform you, are you aware that there are running political ads from the Israeli government on your skte? I get prerolls on the video about humanitarian aid in Gaza. Without taking any political stand, I will point ad that the ad comes from an official Israeli government agency, but doesn’t not carry any clear sender (which is normally a requirement) and might be perceived as propaganda.
Hi Poul-
Thanks for the note! I hadn’t seen these ones before, but will reach out to the ad company. Historically speaking, I ban a range of categories from the site (e.g. gambling, drugs, guns/etc, political ads, and so forth), though, my guess is this isn’t being filed under a political ad, but perhaps something else. Either way, it’s certainly political, regardless of which side of the issue one might be on.
I’m guessing the ad partner company can figure this out, so sending them a note now.
Note, if you’re talking about YouTube window itself (versus the site), then…sigh, I thought I had all the right categories blocked there, but like above, perhaps it’s in some other weird category.
Cheers!
Training Buddy? So, shiny happy people babbling in my ear? Oh for the love of God, NO! Two minutes of that would make me want to stab a puppy.
Does anyone know if Paddling will actually give you a map track now? It didn’t used to, but I haven’t used it in forever.