New watch faces!
Apple added a ton of new watch faces in WatchOS 6, including new styles and complications. "We have more watch faces this year since the very first Apple Watch," Kevin Lynch, Apple's Watch boss, said at the WWDC keynote on Monday.
There are gradient watch faces that animate with the time, new bold watch faces, a watch face that changes languages randomly, and even a solar watch face that changes based on the position of the sun.
A new feature called Activity Trends gives you long-term analysis of your health and fitness — something the Watch doesn't do currently.
Activity Trends compares your progress over the last 90 days to the past 365 days, so you can see if you're improving or trending downward in any given fitness metric, like standing, exercising, moving, and cardio levels.
If your Watch notices you slipping in any category, it can coach you to get back on track.
Your Watch will be able to tell you what song is playing.
Thanks to a new integration with Shazam, you'll be able to raise your wrist to activate Siri and ask "What song is this?" If you have an Apple Watch with cellular connectivity, you won't even need your phone nearby to do this.
Thanks to WatchOS 6, the Apple Watch will be able to address hearing loss and hearing health for the first time.
The Apple Watch is getting a Noise app and complication, which can sense ambient noise in the environment and track the duration of your exposure. If the sounds near you are super loud as to impact your hearing, the Watch will let you know if you're in an area that'll impact your hearing over time.
Worth noting: Apple doesn't record or save any audio to use this feature.
The Apple Watch will have new ways to tell you the time.
If you don't want to look at your Apple Watch to get the time, WatchOS 6 has you covered.
In the new update, you can program a chime to ring in the new hour, or you can have the Watch silently tap out the hour on your wrist. Holding two fingers on the face will make your Apple Watch tell you the time out loud.
The Apple Watch is getting a Cycle Tracking app for women.
Later this year, the Apple Watch will be able to track menstrual cycles, let you record symptoms like cramps, and show patterns and variations of cycle length. It can also tell women when their fertile window is most likely to start.
A slew of useful apps from the iPhone are coming to the Watch.
Apple's Audiobooks, Calculator, and Voice Memos apps will all be on your wrist, so you never have to reach far to take a mental note or do some math. (I personally use the Calculator and Voice Memos apps a lot, so this is a great quality-of-life improvement.)
