watchOS 8 masterclass

watchOS 8 takes everything that’s great about watchOS 7 and makes it even better, with some important new features and even better integration with Apple services

We love our Apple Watches, so we’re always excited when a new version of watchOS drops. New watchOSes may not be quite as featurepacked as a brand new release of iOS or iPadOS, because of course a watch is more limited in what it can do, but when you’re using a device all day, every day even relatively minor improvements can make a big difference to its usefulness. That’s definitely the case here.

What Apple’s done with watchOS 8 is to take what was good about watchOS 7 and improve on its interface, its faces and its features. That means some excellent new watch faces and some clever new complications, better ways to navigate and communicate, and improvements to the health, mindfulness and fitness features. Your Watch can now also warn you when you’ve left your AirPods behind and prevent you from being annoyed when you’re trying to get stuff done.

As we’ll discover in this feature, watchOS 8 introduces tons of useful improvements to the apps and features you use most and banishes some small but very annoying irritations – and in almost every case the improvements are available on Apple Watches from the Series 3 onwards. Sadly, but not unexpectedly (watchOS 7 didn’t support the following models either), watchOS 8 isn’t compatible with the first-generation model, or Apple Watch Series 1 or Series 2.