Best Apple Watch Features to Try Day One

If you just unwrapped a new Apple Watch this morning, there are a variety of tips and tricks that can help you get the most out of your new wearable. Read on for guidance on our favorite Apple Watch features for health, activity, personalization, and more.

Set up activity rings on your Apple Watch

For many people, the Apple Watch is first and foremost a fitness-focused wearable. The key to this is a trio of rings, each represented by a different color: red for moving, green for exercising, and blue for standing.

By default, the green exercise ring closes when it records 30 minutes of vigorous activity, the blue support or bearing ring closes when it moves for at least 1 minute of 12 different hours, and the red movement ring closes when meet your personal goal for active calories burned in a day.

This year, however, Apple added the ability to customize your exercise and goals for the first time. Perhaps you are recovering from an injury and 12 hours of standing along with 30 minutes of exercise is too much for your body. People have also been asking Apple to integrate rest days into the Apple Watch’s ring system, and the feature at least gives users more control over their goals.

Here’s how to change your Apple Watch’s movement, exercise, and position goals with watchOS 7:

1. On your Apple Watch, open the Activity app
2. Scroll down and find the “Change Goals” button
3. Use the + or – buttons to adjust your lenses or use the Digital Crown
4. Touch “OK” to confirm your changes.

The exercise ring can be lowered or raised in intervals of five, up to a minimum of 10 minutes or a maximum of 60 minutes. The objective of the stand can be changed in one hour intervals, up to a minimum of 6 hours. You cannot increase the booth target beyond the default 12 hour mark.

Customizing your watch face

The centerpiece of your Apple Watch is the watch face. On your watch face, you can add bits of information known as complications, including things like weather, activity data, heart rate information, and much more. The easiest way to build an Apple Watch face is with the Apple Watch app on iPhone.

You can find the entire watch face library in the app’s “Face Gallery” tab, and as you create it, you can add faces to your personal collection. Once you’ve created multiple watch faces, you can swipe them from your Apple Watch, making it easy to adjust on the fly for different scenarios.

Apple Watch App Store

You can find apps built specifically for Apple Watch in the watchOS app store. Just press the digital crown on your Apple Watch and look for the App Store icon. Here, you can easily find and install dedicated Apple Watch apps without using your iPhone at all.

Sharing your activity

One of the ways I love to stay motivated with my Apple Watch is by sharing my activity data with friends and family. By doing this, you can see when your friends complete workouts, how much progress they have made towards their goals, and when they win new rewards.

To share your Apple Watch activity data with others, follow these steps:

1. Open the Fitness app on your iPhone
2. Tap the share icon in the lower right corner
3. Tap the “+” button in the top corner
4. Start typing a name, then touch the name you would like to add. If the other person has an Apple Watch, the name will turn red
5. Tap the Submit button, then wait for your friend to accept your activity request. Once accepted, you will receive a notification on your Apple Watch.

Configure Health Monitoring Features

The Apple Watch is useful not only for deliberately tracking your fitness progress, but also for passively monitoring you in the background.

Fall detection

One of those features is called Fall Detection and it uses the gyroscope and accelerometer to detect if you have fallen and, more importantly, if you have fallen and cannot get back up. By default, fall detection is disabled for users under 65, but you can manually enable it with these steps:

1. Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone
2. Touch Emergency SOS
3. Look for the fall detection lever
   • Apple advises that more physically active users can activate fall detection even when you haven’t fallen. This is due to high-impact activity and can look like a fall.
4. Touch Confirm

Heart

In the Apple Watch app on iPhone, you can also enable a set of features that will allow your Apple Watch to help you take care of your heart. Just open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and look for the Heart category. In this section, you can enable the following functions:

• Install the ECG app to take EKGs from your Apple Watch (Series 4 and later)
• Set cardiovascular fitness levels and notifications, which are a strong indicator of your overall health
• Irregular rhythm notifications to be notified when the Apple Watch identifies multiple heart rhythms that may be atrial fibrillation
• High heart rate notifications to be notified when Apple Watch detects a heart rate that increases to a certain level while you appear idle
• Low heart rate notifications to receive notifications when Apple Watch detects a heart rate that falls below 50 BPM for 10 minutes

Oxygen in blood

If you are using an Apple Watch Series 6, it also has support for taking blood oxygen readings with your device. Apple Watch can also take measurements in the background so you have data to reflect on regularly. Just open the Watch app on your iPhone, find the Blood Oxygen category, enable the settings you want.

Reign in your notifications

Apple Watch makes it incredibly easy to stay on top of your notifications. Every time an app sends a push notification, you will receive a tap on your wrist and hear a sound. For many people, however, this can be overwhelming and unnecessary.

To manage notifications on your Apple Watch, open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and choose the Notifications category. Here, you can see a list of apps and manage notifications as needed. My recommendation is to limit notifications as much as possible on your Apple Watch, otherwise you might feel overwhelmed.

Take a look at Apple Fitness +

One of the newest features of Apple Watch is deep integration with APple’s new Fitness + subscription training service. Apple Fitness + offers access to a library of hundreds of on-demand workouts in popular categories like running, cycling, HIIT, rowing, yoga, and more.

Apple Fitness + features deep Apple Watch integration, displaying live data from your Apple Watch on the screen during your workout. Also, if you recently purchased a new Apple Watch, you likely have 3 months of free access to the service.

You can find Apple Fitness + in the Fitness app on your iPhone or Apple TV. It’s also available on iPad, and you can download it from the iPadOS App Store to get started.

Apple Watch Accessories

Lastly, you may want to complement your new Apple Watch with accessories like charging bases and watch straps. These are some of our favorites.

Best Apple Watch Charging Docks:

Best Apple Watch Bands:

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