- Watchos 12 – or as it is in the future to become known, Watchos 26 – has been revealed at this year’s WWDC conference
- New features include an AI training mate, an enhanced smart stack and the new floating glass visual language
- It also gets a Notes app!
We managed it! Watcho’s 26-time and never-never-mentioned as Watcho’s 12-is revealed at this year’s WWDC 2025 developer conference at Apple Park.
You can catch all action live as Tim Cook’s keynote speaker about keynote speaker wraps and the post-game is taking place and you can check out what’s new with iOS 26 and MacOS 26 Tahoe as well.
However, this is Apple Watch’s time to shine, and the presentation did not disappoint when it came to features for the best Apple Watches. Without gilding of the lily and without more, here is everything that has been announced so far for the current crop of Apple Watches.
1. Liquid glass
Liquid glass is the new design of cross-hardware operating system from Apple. Essentially, Apple has changed the way all its operating systems look from watches and phones for tablets and computers to make sure they are gathered in design and comfortable to navigate.
With material that ‘dynamic morphs’ to make sure your experience becomes more intuitive, elements that were solid colored rectangles in the old design, transparent and change shape as you move through them.
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The liquid glass design is across all Apple’s ecosystem. In Watchos 26, it ensures that Widgets expand and contract almost automatically to make use of the small screen room, and elements such as the music playback swidow share the transparent appearance of its larger siblings instead of being a solid white block. Apple also emphasizes that you will be able to see more of your photos onto.
2. Redesigned training app
The training app has been redesigned with liquid glass in mind and it has built-in media playback from Apple Music automatically recommended based on your listening story. Four new customized buttons allow you to front loaded your most used features.
3. Training mate
We were wondering how Apple Intelligence would manifest itself in the clock in a meaningful way, and here we are. Described as a “first-of-Sin-stroke” fitness experience of Apple that has access to the user’s fitness, health and training story, a bit like the AI-driven training insight from Strava and Garmin Connect+. It is designed to “motivate you in a new and unique way” taking into account training load, height, heartbeat … all in your fitness history.
Some of it seems not so useful, such as telling us “so far this year, you’ve been running 200 miles,” but the short -term things, such as telling us “you’re 18 minutes away from closing your activity ring” are likely to be needed. It can also summarize your recent workouts and tell you how you did when it comes to pace and distance against your recent milestones.
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The feature mimics the vocal tones of the Apple Fitness+ trainer, so the voice is designed to be energetic and uplifting, and you can choose multiple voices. I hope the feature becomes more sophisticated and is able to automatically detect, assign and adjust heartbeat as your fitness improves, but I don’t think trainingmate is the intuitive. Yet.
4. Live translation
The iPhone presentation made a lot of Apple Intelligence’s Live translation feature, and Apple Watch comes into the action of Apple Intelligence translation for messages translating into a user’s preferred language on-Wrist.
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Apple Intelligence also suggests relevant actions on-WRIST, such as opening Cashapp when a friend asks for a contribution to a gift or dinner.
4. Notes on wrist
Request of many on the forums in the driveway for this year’s WWDC, the Notes app is coming to Apple Watch in an almost blink-and-you-it-it-it publicity.
5. wrist flick
Along with the double tap movement, Apple Watch can now make use of a simple wrist flick to reject a review, silent a timer or alarm or close Smart Stack.
6. A better smart stack
When we talk about Smart Stack, some changes come to the popular widget stacking overlay. Smart Stack gets hints that are actionable prompts that appear as a discreet review at the bottom of your Apple Watch’s display.
Tapping the hint provides contextual information and actions. The provided example was when you arrive at your favorite Pilates Studio at your usual time, a tip seems to start a Pilates training. This is the kind of small Apple Intelligence addict that really offers personal assistant capacity.
Smart Stack has also received an updated algorithm that reorder based on contextual data.
