Apple Watch

Sleep mode is a Focus mode on your Apple Watch that silences all notifications (and the Raise to Wake feature) until your wake-up alarm goes off in the morning. Water Lock Mode is meant to be used when your Watch will be submerged in water. What both of these modes have in common is that they will lock the display on your Watch to prevent accidental presses while you're asleep or swimming. But what if you need to check something on your Watch during that time? There's a new way to unlock your Apple Watch in watchOS 9, and below, we'll show you how. 

Heart rate recovery refers to the period of time after a workout when your heart rate returns to its average resting rate. During exercise, your heart tends to beat much faster, and when you’re finished, it can take a minute or two for it to lower and return to a normal rate. A faster return to your normal heart rate is one indicator of physical fitness, and a decrease in recovery time over a period of time can indicate an improvement in physical fitness. Because the Apple Watch has a built-in heart rate sensor, it can track this statistic during your workouts and display the information in an easy-to-understand graph. You can access this data through the Heart Rate on your Watch or the Fitness app on your iPhone. 

In 2021, watchOS 8 brought with it the addition of Assitive Touch, an innovative accessibility feature to help make the device easier to navigate for those who have difficulty using the small touch screen. With watchOS 9, Apple expands on its gesture control, adding pinching to move forward and clenching fist to tap. One of the coolest new gestures is the ability to double-pinch to take a photo, eliminating the need to even press a button when taking a photo with the Apple Watch Camera Remote. I'll show you how below.

It's official; Apple will hold its fall 2022 iPhone event on September 7. We expect Apple to reveal the new iPhone 14 line, Apple Watch 8, and AirPods Pro 2, and maybe even Ar Glasses at the event. We'll cover all of it, as well as offer commentary during the special iPhone Life Podcast episode we'll be recording right after. Here’s how you can watch "Far Out," Apple's September iPhone event.

In watchOS 9, the new ability to see and track heart rate zones really takes Apple Watch workouts to the next level. Heart rate zones for exercise are a way to monitor the intensity of your workout. Although this feature won't be available to the public until September, once you have watchOS 9, you can add heart rate zones to any workout. Here's how!

The Apple Watch Series 7 isn’t the upgrade I’d been hoping for, but I bought it anyway. Let me explain. In spring of 2021, as Apple rumors began picking up, we saw renders of a completely redesigned smartwatch. It was going to have sleek flat edges reminiscent of the latest iPhones and iPads. It would house a blood glucose monitor, and, by some accounts, a sensor that measured stress levels. This was going to be a massive upgrade. But as September drew near, the forecast changed. Apple analysts broke it to us that we’d have to wait a whole year to see any of these upgrades!

Getting weather alerts on your Apple Watch is handy, especially if you often do outdoor activities or workouts and leave your iPhone behind. To get weather alerts on your Apple Watch, you'll actually need to set them up on your iPhone first, since your Apple Watch mirrors the notification settings on your iPhone. 

With Prime Day in full swing, we've checked out all the best Prime Day Apple Watch deals so you can save big on one of the best smartwatches around. With so much to consider before buying one, as well as different deals to check out, we've narrowed things down to the very highlights. We've also looked at what you need to know about each Apple Watch model so you know exactly what to do when diving into the Prime Day Apple Watch deals. 

Target heart rates vary person to person, so it's important to know yours in order to keep yourself safe and to maximize the benefit of your Apple Watch workouts. We'll show you how to calculate these yourself for use in any workout, plus how to make sure your Health app or other third-party fitness app calculates them correctly.