Transcription
So, Apple has released Watch OS 26 release candidate, and we're going to go through everything new. First off, let's go ahead and take a look at the settings. We'll go to General, About. So, the build number on this one is 23R351. So, this is the release candidate. So, there's a really good chance, unless we have a release candidate 2, that this will be the final version that comes out to everybody, which does release next Monday. So, I believe it's September 15th when that comes out for everybody.
So, what is new with Watch OS 26? Well, first off, we have that liquid glass design. So, that does come to the watch. It's very minimal. First thing that I'll show off is the lock screen itself. It has a little bit of glass to it. It's not as bad as what it was when they originally released it. You know, it still does it a little bit if you look at it diagonally, especially if you look at it at an angle. It kind of can mess with your head, but not as much as it did initially. So, that's the first thing, but not a massive change.
Now, one of the biggest features with Watch OS 26 is sleep score. So, I actually slept with the watch last night. I got an okay sleep score. I kind of like the fact that it just said "okay" because I totally just slept okay last night. I woke up, stayed up way too long throughout the middle of the night. Something that I do now for some reason, and my brain just keeps going and I just can't stop it. So, we got an okay score. You can actually click the info and kind of get the detailed information on why this score was just okay. So, I had six wakeups for an hour and 42 minutes total. I'm surprised it even gave me an okay score, but it says with an okay score, you probably didn't get all the sleep that your body and mind needed. And that is completely true, 'cause I definitely did not. And then it also tells you how your sleep score was calculated. So, this is brand new with the release candidate. This has not been in any previous versions of Watch OS 26. And I've got to say, it's really cool to see everything and how it's working. So, you still get the same sleep data as before. So, you can see that time that I was awake in the middle of the night for the, you know, almost hour and 42 minutes. There's a few little wakeups there as well, but and you can go through all the details on the sleep. So, you know, as you can see, I don't get a ton of sleep at night. I need to do better. I'm going to do better.
If we keep going, another big liquid glass feature is in notifications. You can actually see through the notifications and get that liquid glass look. Now, this watch face isn't perfect for that. So, I'm going to go ahead and swap it out for something that has a little more color behind it. But there you go. You can kind of see through. And yes, I do have an Ultra 3 coming. I also have the Series 11 coming. So, I'm going to be creating content on both of those devices. So, be sure to hit that subscribe button if you are interested in those at all. Sadly, those are like the two main liquid glass differences. There's not a ton. Obviously, the icons are a little bit more glass-like, I feel. So, we do have that going for it, but there's not a ton of liquid glass on the watch.
But, one of the big updates is with the control center. So, now the control center has changed. You may get in here and you may realize that your water lock or something else is missing. Well, to get those back, you can come all the way down, click edit. Now, before in the past, you'd be able to scroll and see which items were missing. Now, there's this little plus button right up here. You tap on that, and then you have all these different items that you can add. Even third-party support will be coming as soon as the developers can submit those. These right here right now are really just iPhone ones. So when I trigger something here, it will try to trigger it on the iPhone. It's not the best experience, but it does kind of work. But we're going to get more and more of that with actual third-party support, which I'm super excited about. But I really do love how much more powerful the control center has gotten with all these changes. You can see right here I have the Reminders app. All I have to do is tap right there and it will launch the Reminders and start taking a reminder note for me. So I have the speak to text on. So it just automatically just starts creating that reminder. I hit done and now it's going to just save that as one of my reminders. So it's really cool. I'm very happy with it. It's just very interesting with how that works.
And you have the same with the Notes app, which is a new app on Apple Watch with Watch OS 26. So, we'll take a look at that as well. If I scroll down, you can see the Notes app is right here. And you have access to every note you've ever created on your phone, on your iPad, everything is right here. You can also create a new note by tapping the little new note icon. And now, as I speak, it's going to create this new note for me, and then I'll be able to access it on every device. So, if you're somebody that likes to have the ability to take notes on the go, this is a massive game-changer for you. So, I can go ahead and click done. And once that completes, now you can see right here is that new note that I just created. So, you can also swipe and delete them all directly from the Apple Watch, which is really great as well. So you can keep everything kind of organized if you create one by accident, 'cause that's what in the control center, that's what this does. So I can just tap right here. I don't have to find the icon. I don't have to find the note. I can just tap right there and immediately get into the fact that I can start creating a note, which is really, really cool.
Now along with the tap gesture in Watch OS 26, they've added this flick your wrist gesture to kind of dismiss things. As far as I know, this may be a Series 10 and greater. It may work on the Series 9, but I know it doesn't work on the Ultra 1. But it's kind of nice because you can just flick your wrist and dismiss whatever's on screen and get back to your watch face.
Another great new feature is the Workouts app. So, right here, the Workouts app has gotten a redesign. So, you can see right here as you scroll, you see about three items at a time, but once you stop, you just get the features of that one item. You can scroll all the way down the list and then you get this big plus button. And now through here you have a good amount that you normally would go to. But if you want to get to every single one on the list, you hit that plus one more time. And now this will scroll through everything. The Apple Watch has so many workouts. I haven't counted them, but I probably should at some time or another actually go through and just count to see how many exactly there are. But we can go ahead and close that out because that's not everything that's new with workouts.
So, the other thing is Workout Buddy. So, right down here you have this little option. Now, this does require an iPhone that has the Apple Intelligence. So, if you don't have an iPhone that supports that, that is anything that's the iPhone 15 Pro and above, you won't have the Workout Buddy features. But this is really cool. You can set different alerts. So, the Workout Buddy will interrupt you at different times. You can set it to a heart rate or a time or a split, which means every mile they're going to come in. Just let me know. Give me a little bit of info on that workout. In this case, it's a walk. And you do have three different voices to choose from. I will also go through all three voices that they offer with this so that you can hear each one. There are two female and one male voice. So, voice one, "Way to get your workout started." Voice two, "Way to get your workout started." And voice three, "Way to get your workout started." Really cool. Really enjoying these. They give you kind of info on your walk, but they also give you some stats from like previous stuff that you may not have heard or really noticed. So like it will tell you like, "This is your longest walk this month," and stuff like that, or "the most elevation that you've had during a walk all year." I've seen and heard all these things from the Workout Buddy. I really enjoy it.
Along with that, you do have the music tab where you can have it picked for you or you can choose the media and choose a playlist yourself. Now, I will say I did a walk this morning. So, this is with the release candidate. The "pick for you" was getting really good at picking music that I really enjoyed today after the release candidate. I don't know if they reset something or what, but there was a lot of music that was just not for me today. So, I'm not really sure what's going on there. Hopefully, it will relearn what I like to listen to and it will actually get that all fixed up. So, but Workout Buddy is a great feature on the watch and I'm really, really enjoying everything that it has so far.
Now, another feature that I believe is the Series 9 and greater. Maybe Series 10 and greater. I know the Ultra 1 does not have it. So, it may just be the Ultra 2 and the Series 10 and now the new watches. Is this ability to have the audio? If I go down to Sound & Haptics, you can have automatically adjusted volume. This is really nice. I'm really, really enjoying it. If you turn it off, you still have the ability to adjust the volume yourself. But what it does is it listens to the level in the room and then it changes it based on that. So, you can have it the default, you can have it quieter, or you can have it louder. All of them work really well. I've tried all three and, you know, for me, I kind of like the louder just to make sure that I hear it. But overall, it kind of listens to the audio in the room and just makes sure that, you know, it's loud enough to hear that but not so loud that it's distracting to everybody around you.
Now coming out of here, another new feature is with the Smart Stacks. So you have your Smart Stacks right here that you can scroll through and just get that data. But now we have like what they call a Smart Stack hint. So if I was to grab my iPhone and I turn on the camera, it should pop up right there in the middle. You can see that hint right there. And what that basically does is it allows you... Well, it actually opened up the Health app. Let's try it one more time. There it goes. It opens up the Smart Stack. You tap it one more time and now it will give me quick access to the camera on my phone, which is really, really nice. I like that feature. It does it with other things other than just the camera. That's just one of the easiest, but it can do other stuff based on your location and everything like that. Give you hints. Maybe you always use a different workout app when you go to the gym. It will pop up that little notification when you get to the gym and just give you quick access just to give you quick access to start your workout without having to go through a bunch of apps and menu options.
Now along with Watch OS 26, we did get the second hand on more watch faces. So that was really nice to see. So if I go into Always-On Display, now this is a Series 10 only. It will also be on the Ultra 3 and the Series 11. They have an upgraded display that allows you to see the second hand as it ticks through all the time. So now, not every watch face is sadly supported. This one is. Let's go to a new one. This one right here, you can see it has just the little digits. It's a digital one. And if I turn it off, that one's not supported. I kept hoping that they would add support for that, but it doesn't seem like they're going to because we are on the release candidate. This is one of the original watch faces that actually had it. So, this one's had it ever since the beginning. Of course, Mickey Mouse sadly does not tap his foot when you're in that always-on as well. But they did add it to the infroraph watch face as well. So there's a good amount, but still not all. And hopefully they eventually just make that the default. No matter how detailed that watch face is, it would be really nice that they did.
Now they also added a few new watch faces. The one that is like the least impressive is the Photo watch face because this is basically all it does is the time has a more liquid glass feel to it. It's not very much. It's not very noticeable. I don't know why this was the only thing they gave us during the other betas, but they also have new watch faces now as well. And this is one that is an Hermes only watch face. It is very weird. Like I will say, like I can go back and forth. It does all these weird different animations and it's it's really fun. Like I love the way they do stuff. But there is that one. There is also this new exactograph watch face which is just crazy. You can actually tap on the watch face and kind of just change the way it works. Like it's it's just very interesting. It's usually a little bit more responsive than what it's being right now. Usually it just taps a couple times. And then there is also, let me go to the edit 'cause it looks like I have to read it. There is also this Flow watch face. Go ahead and add that one right there. So, these are the two to three new watch faces. They also have a new Ultra watch face that's Ultra only. This is the Waypoint watch face, which is really awesome and looks really cool. And so, if you want to see all the watch faces, all the options for these watch faces, I have a video right here. Just click right there and I go through every single color in detail on those. Or if you want to know what this app is and what this complication is for, just click right here. I have a full video on how to get your blood oxygen readings back on your Apple Watch. If you have an Apple Watch that was affected by that, this app fixes it. Hope you have a great one and I'll see you in the next one. God bless.