Health and wellness are so important nowadays, not only pertaining to physical health but also mental health. It’s no surprise then that smartwatches, fitness trackers, mindfulness apps, smart scales, and other tech have been gaining steam over the past decade.
Apple is continuing to increase its focus in this space with several new features in iOS 17, iPad OS 17, and watchOS 10 that focus on health and well-being throughout its various products, from the iPhone 14 to the Apple Watch Ultra (and other models). There are even new features for the AirPods, which will be delivered via software update. There’s a lot to unpack, but these are some of the best of Apple’s newest health and wellness features.
1 Journal
Remember back in the day when you would have a personal journal tucked into your night table drawer, complete with a lock and key? Well, the high-tech world has made journaling digital now. There are e-readers with journal sections, notes apps, and digital scrapbooks or photo albums where people keep their memories. Apple’s new Journal app for iPhone combines all of this into one convenient space where you can store pivotal moments and thoughts to reflect on later.
To get you started, Journal will provide suggestions that are intelligently curated from your most recent activity so you can craft entries. Maybe you captured several photos from a recent vacation or took a video of beautiful scenery in your neighborhood. The Journal can not only store a selection of these photos but also your thoughts, feelings, and memories about them. Intelligent prompts help you along the way, asking questions about the images, for example, that will inspire you to write more. You’ll get scheduled notifications to add more journals and, over time, build a reflective, meaningful habit. That could mean taking a few minutes during your public transit commute to add a journal entry, creating something new every day at lunch, or making every Sunday night your journal time to reflect on the past week and the week ahead.
2 Health App on iPad
Up until now, the Health app has been tailored for viewing on the iPhone. Those who own an iPad haven’t been able to leverage the full screen with the app. As part of iPadOS 17, you can now see your Health data on the iPad in richer detail, with the view optimized for the bigger screen. There’s a new look for Favorites, insights with Trends, Highlights, and detailed interactive charts.
You can also now use the iPad to manage medications, track menstrual cycles, log emotions and daily moods, see health records (where available) from different institutions, and more. It’s all private and protected, with nobody, including Apple, able to access your personal health information.
It sounds like a simple update, but being able to see all your stats on the same screen instead of scrolling up and down can provide a better, holistic picture of your health. Accessing the various categories from a convenient sidebar makes it simple to find exactly what you’re looking for. Admittedly, the Health app on iPhone isn’t the most user-friendly app. Presumably, the version for the iPad will be much easier to navigate.
3 Log Feelings on Apple Watch
The Mindfulness app on Apple Watch is a great tool for working on your mental health. There are breathing and relaxation exercises to help you calm down and de-stress, as well as a variety of mindfulness and low-impact exercises via Apple Fitness+. Among the many updates in watchOS 10 is the ability to log momentary emotions and daily moods in the Mindfulness app. Open the app and scroll using the Digital Crown to select from a variety of multidimensional shapes to indicate how you are feeling at the moment and what's impacting your mood. Did you just complete a workout and are feeling energized? Started a new project at work and you’re feeling stressed?
There are plenty of apps that allow you to log how you feel, but with full Apple Watch integration and the addition of logging external factors, you can go back and figure out what potentially triggers certain emotions. Maybe you realize that on the days you don’t get quality sleep you tend to feel more anxious, or that your mood is more pleasant after a morning jog. You can also track your menstrual cycle to see how moods might be affected by different stages.
The app will also include depression and anxiety assessments to help determine your risk level. If a higher risk is detected, you’ll be able to connect with resources in your region, and even create a PDF of the data to share with your doctor.
4 Vision Health
Myopia or nearsightedness is a common condition, and a new feature will aim to help prevent kids from adopting behaviors that could lead to the development of myopia while also helping adults reduce eye strain from staring at screens all day. One feature is called Screen Distance, which will deliver a pop-up message if you are holding the device too close to your face. The feature uses the device’s TrueDepth camera to detect if you’re holding it closer than 12 inches from your face for an extended period of time. If so, it will recommend holding it further away.
The second feature is daylight detection, called Time Spent in Daylight, which will determine if Apple Watch wearers are spending the recommended 80-120 minutes per day outdoors, which can be essential for vision health. In the Health app, you can see how much time you have spent outdoors. If you’re not near the recommended time, you can make a proactive decision to go for a quick walk or even work outside on the deck for an hour to reach the daily goal. The feature uses the Apple Watch’s ambient light sensor, which means for kids to use it, they would need to be wearing their own Apple Watch. But it’s a useful feature for adults, too, not only for vision health but for overall health and wellness, encouraging you to get that all-important Vitamin D.
5 Adaptive Audio in Apple AirPods
Another exciting feature, Adaptive Audio relates to your auditory health, ensuring that you get the best possible experience when listening to music, podcasts, or even chatting on a call while wearing the AirPods. Available with the AirPods Pro 2, Adaptive Audio will automatically reduce loud environmental noise, so you can enjoy a more comfortable listening experience seamlessly while you move.
It effectively combines Transparency mode with Active Noise Cancelation to analyze the conditions of your environment and adjust audio on the fly. Maybe you have walked from the quiet outdoors into a busy shopping center, for example, you’re passing through a crowd of people. Whatever the case, the audio will take the real-time ambient conditions into consideration and adjust so that you can always hear at a comfortable level.
6 Updates to Fitness+
If you subscribe to Apple Fitness+, which you can do now even without an Apple Watch, you can now build custom plans that combine not only workouts and physical activities but also meditations. You might want to wake up to a morning run, do a 20-minute weight training exercise three times a week, and make sure you get a meditation or yoga session every evening. These plans can be based on the day of the week, duration, workout type, and other factors.
Additionally, the sharing tab where you can view stats from all your connected friends and family members will be redesigned to provide a cleaner look. You’ll see highlights of each person’s activity, including their workout streaks and awards they have earned, which can provide further motivation for you and prompt you to send them encouraging messages for achieving their goals.
With the new Smart Stacks feature on Apple Watch, you can also instantly queue up a workout or meditation session. The widgets appear when you swipe up on the watch face or rotate the digital crown, and can include other pertinent apps, like calendar and weather. You can use these to select multiple workouts to do in sequence (like cardio followed by meditation) to seamlessly transition from one to the next. You can also save a favorite Stack to your library to call it up with a single motion.
There's also Audio Focus in Fitness+, which allows you to prioritize volume if you want to focus on the trainer’s voice and their coaching and encouragement, filtering the music to a quieter section in the background.
If you’re into cycling, watchOS 10 is bringing new cycling features to the mix as well, including automatic workout reminders, calorimetry for e-biking, Fall Detection, and more tailored metrics. Once you trigger a cycling workout from the Apple Watch, it will automatically show up as a Live Activity on your iPhone. You can use full-screen view, useful if you have the phone mounted in the bike’s handlebars, to see your real-time stats, like heart rate and elevation. In addition to now being able to connect to Bluetooth-enabled cycling accessories like power meters and cadence sensors, Apple Watch will also provide deeper insights as you ride, like estimated Functional Threshold Power (FTP), advising the highest level of cycling intensity you can maintain for an hour, and, using this data, Power Zones, which can help improve your performance over time.
Plenty to come in health and wellness
From working on your fitness and health goals to focusing on your mental health, and improving your visual and auditory experiences, the latest features in iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10, and AirPods software updates will enhance the experience across the board with all the Apple products you use on a day-to-day basis.