Apple Watch

Stay up-to-date on the latest Apple Watch news, and learn how to get the most out of your device with our comprehensive tutorials. From updates to features to troubleshooting tips, we’ve got you covered.

Apple Watch reportedly has onboard hardware for measuring blood oxygen saturation

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 25, 2015

Currently, your Apple Watch learns about calories you burn by applying some math magic to your heart rate readings and values obtained from its sensors.

The method provides reasonably accurate estimates of resting/active calories. However, even more precise calorie-burning readings could come soon if Apple decides to enable the hardware feature which can reportedly measure oxygen levels in your blood.

As an iFixit teardown has identified, the Apple Watch heart rate sensor has onboard hardware for detecting blood oxygen saturation.

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Are your Apple Watch resting calories all over the place?

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 13, 2022
Calories on Apple Watch

According to numerous posts over at Apple Support Communities, as well as a huge thread on MacRumors' forum, an unknown subset of Apple Watch owners are complaining about their resting calories in the Activity and Workout apps being all over the place.

As opposed to active calories burned when working out or performing basically any other activity other than breathing and lying in bed, your body needs resting calories to sustain itself and digest food when you're reclining with your muscles relaxed.

In other words, resting calories are burned when you're doing absolutely nothing aside from being alive.

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Apple Watch Edition booklet details Force Touch implementation, manufacturing process and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 25, 2015

Recent photos and video depicting an Apple Watch Edition being unboxed provide an interesting insight into engineering that went into the creation of force sensing on the wrist-worn device, with details that go well beyond Apple's rather scarce description on the Technology section of the Apple Watch mini-site.

As you know, not only does the Apple Watch display respond to touch-based gestures like tapping and swiping, it also uses Force Touch technology to respond to the pressure of your finger.

Now, gold Apple Watch Editions ship with a rather informative booklet that mostly deals with Apple's manufacturing process. In addition, this booklet sheds more light on the implementation of Force Touch technology and other hardware features of the devices such as sapphire screen protection, Apple's smallest speaker yet and more.

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Poll: has Apple Watch software update made your favorite apps more responsive?

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 14, 2018

Last week saw the release of Apple's first software update for the Apple Watch.

Among other changes, the flurry of enhancements in Watch OS 1.0.1 include performance improvements related to both Apple's stock apps and third-party applications you download from the App Store.

Unlike stock apps that run directly on the device, third-party ones run as WatchKit extensions on your iPhone and are then streamed off the phone to your wrist. That's why opening Twitter, Instagram, CalcBot, or any other third-party app for that matter, takes a frustratingly long time to load vs. native apps.

In that regard, Watch OS 1.0.1 should have changed things for the better, but has it? If you own an Apple Watch, and have updated to Watch OS 1.0.1, do your favorite apps now load faster than before?

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LongScreen now supports combining Apple Watch screenshots

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

One of my favorite screenshot managing apps on iOS, LongScreen, has been updated to support Apple Watch screenshots. This means that you can now combine multiple Apple Watch screenshots into a single screenshot, all on your iPhone.

The app, which is well-known for its ability to combine iPhone screenshots with padding and a cleaned up status bar, is now on version 1.3.

You can purchase LongScreen from the App Store for only $2.99, a price that's totally worth it when you consider the time that you can save from using it.

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App Watch: game on

Timothy Reavis ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Although I'm not a hardcore gamer, I do my fair share of gaming, largely on my Mac or PC, but iOS has demanded my attention as a gaming platform as well. Console gaming doesn't greatly interest me, however, due to the cost of games and limitation of genres. But I don't mind investing into a gaming PC that I can also use for work, school, and countless other things, and my iPad Air 2 is also great for playing the more graphically intense titles on iOS.

More recently, gaming moved beyond iPads and iPhones to alight on users' wrists with Apple Watch, which is our primary focus in this article. Although the games are very basic, as they should be, many are designed to burn a few minutes while in line or other places where pulling out an iPhone isn't entirely convenient, while others are built exclusively for Apple Watch.

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Photos and video of Apple Watch Edition being unboxed

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Units of the staggeringly-expensive Apple Watch Edition began shipping this week, and some customers have already started receiving their orders. Yesterday, a user over in this MacRumors forum thread posted a series of photos showing his new golden wearable.

The photos are of a 42mm Yellow Gold Edition with black Sports band. The box looks similar to that of the Stainless Steel Apple Watch, but is dark blue (almost purple) in color and includes a matching cleaning cloth. Check out the images below to see more differences.

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How to make Apple Watch play nice with your iPhone on a 5Ghz Wi-Fi network

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated August 8, 2019

Although not quite new, we reported this morning that Apple Watch can't connect to a 5Ghz Wi-Fi network. It's not a bug or anything. It's just a limitation of the current hardware found in Apple Watch. For those users that are not aware of this limitation, it can cause problems when believing that because you are on a known Wi-Fi network, Apple Watch and iPhone should still be able to connect even if they're out of Bluetooth range.

There is just no way to make your Apple Watch connect to a 5Ghz Wi-Fi network, but there are ways to work around that limitation. I've actually been helping people with that specific issue for a few days now, and because I've seen misinformation going around, I thought it would be best to just get things cleared up and explain how you can have both your iPhone and Apple Watch play nice with each other, even if your iPhone is connected to a 5Ghz network.

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Apple Watch doesn’t work with 5Ghz Wi-Fi networks

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 22, 2015

In addition to Bluetooth, the Apple Watch also relies on Wi-Fi to communicate with its paired iPhone. In fact, the device can provide a number of useful features over Wi-Fi when iPhone isn't in Bluetooth range such as Messages, Siri and more.

It also automatically connects to known Wi-Fi networks that your iPhone, while connected to the Apple Watch over Bluetooth, has connected to before.

However, the Apple Watch won't connect to a 5GHz Wi-Fi network, even if its paired iPhone has previously connected to it, as first noted by French blog iGen.fr.

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