# WatchOS 7



## ronalddheld (May 5, 2005)

https://gizmodo.com/here-are-all-the-new-features-coming-to-your-apple-watc-1844083298


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

Additional info straight from the horse's mouth:
What's New in watchOS - Apple Developer

Event stream here (link subject to change) with watchOS segment at 45:13:
Apple Events - WWDC20

And keep an eye on this link as we get closer to watchOS 7's release date:
watchOS 7

Preview:
watchOS 7

New watchOS 7 page now that it's been released (Sep 16):








watchOS 9


watchOS 9 brings a Workout app packed with new features, a new Medications app, greater insights for sleep and heart health, and much more.



www.apple.com


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## watchcrank_tx (Sep 1, 2012)

Public beta next month.


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## monsters (Mar 28, 2010)

Glad to finally see native sleep tracking on the AW. Surprised to see no blood Ox level though, as many smart/fitness watches now have it, and its a key metric with the ongoing pandemic


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

I'm going to assume for now that, like the other new OSes, language translation can be done on-device rather than uploading data for remote processing. There's good reason for high-powered 64-bit CPUs in a smartwatch.


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## ronalddheld (May 5, 2005)

Tim Cook said the release date is tomorrow.


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

I might update mine this weekend along with my phone and iPad. I wonder if I'll actually like the new sports-watch-like faces with the timing bezel, the new chrono, and the GMT four-hander.


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## ronalddheld (May 5, 2005)

I tried this morning and found it is over 1 Gb.


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

Oh yeah, just so there's no confusion --

On this page, under Watch Faces, Apple says you can find faces in the App Store and on participating websites.

_What this means_ is, this is related to "Face Sharing", which is a feature that allows you to send one of your face configurations - dial choice, complication set, etc - with your friends. It's just that you can download a face-and-complication configuration from app makes and website owners.

Say, for example, you go to an outdoor adventure website; they can have a button that "downloads" (or, realistically, sends configuration info) to your watch a combination of existing complications and dial that they think would be useful for camping. Or you download an app that has an Apple Watch component, and the app developer includes a kind of sample configuration that sets up your watch face automatically.

What this _doesn't_ mean is wholly-custom dials and hands and whatnot. It still uses existing Apple-made dials, fonts, hands, and layouts.


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

Brief notes about some of the new faces (might upload pics later if I feel like it) —

The 24hr hand, as you might’ve seen, is set by tapping anywhere within the round dial (I haven’t been able to bring up the Calendar by tapping the date window at 3 as usual). You get a a scrollable list of 3-letter city codes representing time zones around the world; and if you’re unclear about which is which, the full name is displayed at the top of the screen. An extra bonus is that any additional cities you’ve added in your World Clock app will also show up in this list. That means that if you’ve got family in, say, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, you won’t have to remember that they’re in the same time zone as Chicago — it’ll have Sheboygan on the list right next to Chicago.

The “Count Up” face has a timing bezel that starts a cumulative timer (the only term that comes to mind) when you tap it and then tap Start. Before tapping Start, you can also use the crown to set the bezel “pip” anywhere around the dial like a bidirectional timing bezel, and it’ll add the difference between the pip and the minutes hand to the total. It is NOT a count-down bezel, though (I usually use a dive bezel to count down to a future time, like when my laundry should be done or my parking meter runs out). It also means that it won’t alert you when the minutes hand reaches the pip; it’ll just keep counting the time since you started it.

The new Chronograph Pro face requires two taps to start the chrono, unlike the older Chronograph that has a dedicated start button in the top right corner. But it adds a tachymeter bezel option to the existing timescale choices (and you can change the bezel while the chrono function is running, too). Both chronographs will also show you the stopwatch view (selectable between an analog dial and several digital displays) if you let them keep running on their own. So, IMO, the new Chronograph Pro is kinda a wash; it needs an extra step to start timing, but it lets you add one more complication, and it’s harder to trigger accidentally.

The Stripes face can be cool, but man, if you want to set all nine possible stripes, it might take a while. You can do any number between 2 and 9 stripes, though.

The Typograph face is a miss, IMO, but I might try one of the combos for a while. The full-screen twelve-numeral options are pretty clunky, especially the Roman numerals. Apple has botched watch faces occasionally anyway (the Explorer face, introduced for the cellular Series 3, is my least favorite by far) but you can credit them for trying.

No faces have disappeared, as far as I can tell.

Bonus extra function: The new handwashing detection is kinda cool. You can let it remind you to wash your hands when you return home, too. It appears to be a little too picky in how it’ll pause when my left wrist is turned upward even though I’m still lathering up. Could just be my perception, though. Maybe it’ll get refined later.


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

Another detail I just learned:

The GMT face's 24hr bezel's night-day line changes depending on the sunrise/sunset of the location it's tracking.

So here, "NUU" is Nuuk, Greenland, which is far to the north; and "OUA" is Ougadougou, Burkina Faso, near the Equator. You can easily see how Nuuk's daylight hours, shown in red, are far shorter than Ougadougou's.

By the way: I also finally learned that London does not equal GMT/UTC time because the UK follows Daylight Savings Time. Choosing another city (harder to find than I thought) that's on +-0 time and doesn't use Daylight Savings, then changing the city abbreviation to "GMT" (Watch app -> Clock -> City Abbreviations) is the way to show the correct GMT time on the watch.

Update: UTC is selectable in iOS's Clock app. Add it to your World Clock list and you'll see it later on the watch. (h/t @rationaltime for making me look again)


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## rationaltime (May 1, 2008)

Are you sure that is the only way to show GMT?
Not being able to choose Zulu time would be a major 
marketing error. 


Thanks,
rationaltime


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

rationaltime said:


> Are you sure that is the only way to show GMT?
> Not being able to choose Zulu time would be a major
> marketing error.
> 
> ...


Hmm. Ya know, you got me thinking.

I looked for "GMT", but it's not selectable. Neither is Zulu time. Buuuut... now that I finally typed it in to look... there's UTC.

Bingo!

My watch is upstairs now, so I'm not sure yet if the day/night line will be split 50/50 or not. I'll check it later.


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

More about the GMT/UTC/24hr face:

As above, the day/night portions change depending on the latitude of the city. Here's Nome, Alaska and Honolulu, Hawaii:


















There's an option for "None", which basically turns it into a straight 50/50 display based on your watch's time, and doesn't line up with any city or location:


















The arrow option, on the list below "None", is for your current location, which then adjusts the bezel to show sunrise and sunset (confirmed by the sunset complication in the upper right corner):









You can add a "monogram" by changing the city abbreviation to whatever you want:









UTC does _not_ display an even 50/50 split for sunrise/sunset... because the actual times for sunrise/sunset are not exactly 0600 and 1800 according to UTC time. Well, it's pretty close to 50/50, but the colors aren't on-the-nose at 0600 and 1800. This should change based on the time of year and the Earth's orbit.


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## ronalddheld (May 5, 2005)

Is everyone on 7.0.2?


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

ronalddheld said:


> Is everyone on 7.0.2?


Mine is. Still annoyed by how Infograph doesn't show the Monogram correctly like it used to in watchOS 6.


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## ronalddheld (May 5, 2005)

BarracksSi said:


> Mine is. Still annoyed by how Infograph doesn't show the Monogram correctly like it used to in watchOS 6.
> 
> View attachment 15501508
> 
> ...


I think there are many deplenishments from 6.0 that need fixing.


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## watchcrank_tx (Sep 1, 2012)

BarracksSi said:


> Bonus extra function: The new handwashing detection is kinda cool. You can let it remind you to wash your hands when you return home, too. It appears to be a little too picky in how it'll pause when my left wrist is turned upward even though I'm still lathering up. Could just be my perception, though. Maybe it'll get refined later.


It's not just you. It would activate while lathering for me too, but it would also activate often at random times. Perhaps I unconsciously rub my hands together in evil glee whilst contemplating my plans to take over the world or something. I turned it off.

Sleep tracking has some bugs too. It seems to be tracking my sleep accurately but not my time in bed, such that it always reports I slept for several hours longer than I was in bed.


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

ronalddheld said:


> I think there are many deplenishments from 6.0 that need fixing.


This guy says there's a proposed fix that should be merged into a future update:


__
https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/iznm8m/_/g8ufmqc


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

watchcrank_tx said:


> Sleep tracking has some bugs too. It seems to be tracking my sleep accurately but not my time in bed, such that it always reports I slept for several hours longer than I was in bed.


I haven't even looked at any sleep data. I already know that I can go pick up a CPAP at Walter Reed.


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

Daylight Savings Time versus Standard Time visualized in WatchOS:

What I thought was interesting was how it made it clear that the day - as far as the amount of daylight is concerned - isn't any longer or shorter. It's just that we now "wake up later".

(personally, if we decide to stop this semiannual time-change ritual, I think we should leave it on Standard Time; "high noon" is noon, after all, not 1300)

First screenshot is Oct 31, the last day of DST here in the USA. The arrow is pointing towards Solar Noon.









Second screenshot is Nov 4, after the changeover.









Side-by-side:


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## ronalddheld (May 5, 2005)

Looks like we could be getting 7.1 soon.


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## BarracksSi (Feb 13, 2013)

ronalddheld said:


> Looks like we could be getting 7.1 soon.


Got it, and it fixed the monogram bug:


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