Health, Mindfulness, Fitness and more

How the new watchOS can help you live a healthier life

When Apple first launched the Watch, it didn’t quite seem to know its full potential. Over the years it’s become clear that one of its core jobs is to help you live better. You can see that on the product web page, where the first features listed are the health ones: the Blood Oxygen app, ECG app, heart rate notifications, fall detection. And it’s also apparent in the latest OS improvements.

The headline new feature is respiratory rate tracking, which counts your breaths as you sleep and works out your breathing rate per minute. Data is then sent to the Health app. This is useful because irregular breathing can be an indicator of sleep apnoea, lung disease and other respiratory issues.

The respiratory tracking is activated when you’re in Sleep, one of the modes in the new Focus modes. These are more flexible, customisable forms of Do Not Disturb, and you can trigger them from Control Centre or at specified times or locations. There are new Tai Chi and Pilates workouts in the Workouts app, and Apple plans to add fall detection to some of the workouts in the near future. And, last but not least, Mindfulness gets a new Reflect feature for short guided meditations.