Available on all new Apple Watch models, watchOS 9 is Apple's major 2022 OS update for its line of wearables. And while this version has almost reached the end of its cycle, the Cupertino firm has still been issuing minor builds to patch some of the leftover bugs before the next release debuts publicly. Below you will find everything you need to know about watchOS 9, including its compatibility, new features, and more.

Does my Apple Watch support watchOS 9?

Here are the models that are compatible with watchOS 9:

It's worth noting that your paired device needs to be an iPhone 8 or a newer model running at least iOS 16.

When was watchOS 9 released?

After three months of beta-testing, Apple made watchOS 9 available to the public starting Sept. 12, 2022. If you have a compatible model, you should be able to see the update prompt in the settings.

How can I install watchOS 9?

  1. Launch the Watch app on your iPhone.
  2. Click on General.
  3. Tap the Software Update section.
  4. Give the page a few seconds to refresh. Tap Download and Install when the watchOS 9 update appears.
  5. Agree to the Terms of Service after reading them thoroughly.

Your watch will update itself after it finishes downloading and preparing the package. Make sure to keep your Apple Watch on its charger during the installation process.

watchOS 9: All the new features

watchOS 9 Changelog

watchOS 9 brings great new ways to keep you active, healthy, and connected with Apple Watch. You have more ways to train and measure your workouts, a completely redesigned compass app, a new app to track your medications, more powerful sleep tracking with sleep stages, and better insights and support for your heart health if you have been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation.

Watch Faces

  • Astronomy now displays current cloud coverage and star map
  • Lunar includes a Chinese, Hebrew, or Islamic lunar calendar wrapped around a moon with a live rendering of moon phases
  • Playtime includes animated numbers designed by Chicago artist Joi Fulton with editing options for background colors
  • Metropolitan features a type-driven watch face with numbers that dynamically change in style and weight as you turn the Digital Crown
  • Nike Analog, Nike Bounce, Nike Compact, Nike Digital, and Nike Hybrid, all with a tappable Nike Swoosh that launches Nike Run Club, are now available for more models of Apple Watch
  • Rich Complications, Chinese script options, and background color editor available on Breathe, California, Modular, Typograph and more
  • Portraits now supports portraits of dogs and cats and landscapes with the ability to customize the color of the background or entire photo
  • Ability to choose the watch face displayed when a Focus is active

Workout

  • Ability to customize and scroll through multiple Workout Views during a workout including Splits, Segments, Activity Rings, and more
  • Heart Rate Zones view uses max and resting heart rate to create personalized zones and shows time spent in each zone
  • Elevation view displays current elevation and elevation gain and visually maps your elevation progress during Outdoor Run, Outdoor Cycle, Outdoor Wheelchair Run Pace, Hiking, Outdoor Walk and Outdoor Wheelchair Walk Pace
  • Running Power view, measured in watts, shows an instantaneous measure of how much power is generated during your run (Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Series 6 and later)
  • Running Form Metrics including Stride Length, Ground Contact Time, and Vertical Oscillation available in Workout Views to monitor and trend running efficiency (Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Series 6 and later)
  • Custom Workout enables you to create Workouts with repeating sets of intervals that can be based on a time, distance or an open goal with automatic or manual advancement to your next set
  • Pacer provides a training experience to help you sustain a desired pace using alerts and a dedicated workout view
  • Multisport Workout supports duathlon or triathlon training with automatic detection of Open Water/Pool Swim, Indoor/Outdoor Cycle, Indoor/Outdoor Run, and transitions to the next leg
  • Workout alerts can be customized for metrics like pace, power, cadence, and heart rate zones
  • Pool Swim workouts automatically detect kickboard
  • SWOLF swimming efficiency metric calculated as stroke count plus time to complete lap

Fitness+

  • Trainer guidance displayed on-screen including targets for Intensity, strokes per minute for Rowing, revolutions per minute for Cycling, and incline percentage for Treadmill
  • Trainer guidance and personal fitness metrics displayed on-screen for compatible third party TVs and devices

Compass

  • Redesigned compass app with more in-depth information and zoomable views (Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Series 5 and later)
  • Primary face supports both an analog compass dial and a digital view of current bearing and direction
  • Zoomed view provides analog view of bearing plus your elevation, incline and coordinates
  • Compass Waypoints allow you to mark your position or point of interest (Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Series 6 and later)
  • Backtrack uses GPS to track your historic path in case you get lost or disoriented (Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Series 6 and later)

Sleep

  • Sleep stage tracking using data from the accelerometer and heart rate sensor to detect time spent in REM, Core, and Deep sleep, as well as awake
  • Comparisons chart provides a view of heart rate and respiratory rate alongside time asleep in the Health app on iPhone

Medications

  • Capabilities to log as-needed and scheduled medications, including the amount and time taken
  • Ability to view medication schedule and what you have logged for the day
  • Reminders to log scheduled medications
  • Medications complication to see your schedule or quickly open the app

AFib History

  • Weekly notifications with estimate of the percentage of time spent in atrial fibrillation during previous calendar week
  • Highlights show which day of week and time of day when AFib is highest
  • Tracking of lifestyle factors that may influence time spent in AFib including Exercise, Sleep, Weight, Alcohol Consumption, and Mindful Minutes in the Health app on iPhone
  • Sharable PDF for richer conversations with healthcare providers
  • Support for users 22 years or older with diagnosis of atrial fibrillation

Family Setup

  • Podcasts app is now available and includes ability to search, download, follow shows, and explore curated content
  • Third party email support extended to Yahoo and Outlook
  • Editing and sharing contact photos now available

Accessibility

  • Expanded Quick Actions with AssistiveTouch for play and pause in Now Playing, pause and resume in Workout, take a photo using Camera Remote, and toggle between map view and turn-by-turn directions in Maps
  • Bluetooth keyboard pairing with Apple Watch
  • Apple Watch Mirroring lets you control Apple Watch remotely from your paired iPhone via AirPlay with support for assistive technologies like Voice Control or Switch Control as an alternative to tapping the Apple Watch display

Other features and improvements:

  • Low Power Mode maintains core features of Apple Watch while temporarily disabling select background features such as always on display and heart health notifications to extend battery life
  • Support for international roaming allows you to stay connected to your cellular network while traveling abroad (Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Series 5 and later)
  • Expanded keyboard languages including French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish available on Apple Watch Series 7 and later
  • Communication safety setting in Screen Time gives parents the ability to enable warnings for children when they receive or attempt to send photos that contain nudity in Messages
  • Cycle deviation notifications alert you if your logged menstrual cycles show a pattern of infrequent periods, irregular periods, prolonged periods, or persistent spotting
  • New Cardio Recovery metric estimated by Apple Watch available in the Health app
  • Reminders app updated to support editing so you can add key details like location, tags, and due times
  • Calendar app redesigned to support creation of new calendar events with ability to switch to day, list, and week views
  • Enhanced Podcast experience with support for search, ability to follow and unfollow shows, and discover new content in Listen Now
  • Dock updated to show apps running in background at the top
  • Notifications redesigned with streamlined slimline banner when actively using Apple Watch
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Workout additions

Fitness tracking is one of the biggest selling points of the Apple Watch. It indeed does an excellent job providing various metrics — calories, distances, steps, elevation, intensity, and much, much more. watchOS 9 adds new workout views, allowing you to view different metrics during a workout. This makes it easier to focus on the goals you're aiming at by viewing the relevant statistics. Additionally, you can customize your workouts and even race against your past self. And if you're running watchOS 9.2 or later, your smartwatch can automatically detect a racetrack when you arrive at one.

Medication tracking

Many people, especially adults, take medications daily. Sometimes keeping track can be challenging, especially when there's a variety of them. watchOS 9 simplifies this aspect of our lives by introducing medication reminders. This allows you to log the pills you take and notifies you when it's time to consume them. That's not to mention that it also warns you about mixing certain meds with alcohol, etc.

Richer sleep tracking

Sleep tracking has always been a weakness of the Apple Watch. The smartwatch isn't smart enough to tell when you're sleeping if it's not within the stable schedule you assign. So for those of us with messed up sleep cycles, the feature is pretty much useless and inaccurate. watchOS 9 can track the time spent in REM, deep sleep, or when you might've woken up. Of course, this doesn't fix sleep tracking, but it's a welcome addition nonetheless.

New watch faces

We get new watch faces with every major release, and watchOS 9.0 is no different. This version introduces Metropolitan, Playtime, Lunar, and Astronomy faces. It additionally tweaks some of the existing ones — allowing users to further customize them with a refreshed and expanded color palette. This makes the Apple Watch an even more customizable device that users can tweak based on their clothing, appearances, or moods.

Apart from these faces, Apple has also unlocked the exclusive Nike watch faces to all users. So even if you have a non-Nike Apple Watch, watchOS 9 will allow you to use these branded faces. Furthermore, watchOS 9.3 and 9.5 introduced new Unity Mosaic and Pride Celebration watch faces, respectively.

Family setup

Apple is a business, so it wants to sell as many watches as possible. To further tempt parents to buy one for their child, this update improves Family setup. iPhone-less kids can now listen to podcasts, access smart home devices, and unlock compatible doors using their wrists. These changes further push the company's watch toward becoming an independent device.

Accessibility

Apple announced a while back that it is bringing new accessibility features to the Apple Watch. watchOS 9 makes this promise a reality. Users can now mirror their watches to their iPhones using AirPlay. This allows them to view the tiny screen on the bigger one and interact with it. Additionally, users can now double pinch to start a workout or take a photo.

Productivity

Our watches' small displays shouldn't limit us from being productive. This release brings new calendar views — allowing users to easily create events and check what their days or weeks look like. Additionally, to avoid distracting you, notifications will now appear as a small banner on top rather than a full-screen alert when you're using your watch. This doesn't interrupt whatever task you're working on. If you're not using your watch, then the notifications will show up as they would normally do as full-screen alerts that display the full details.

Low Power Mode

watchOS 9 introduces Low Power Mode — a feature that allows users to preserve the battery life. Unlike the original Power Reserve Mode, this one doesn't break all the smart features of the Apple Watch. Instead, it limits battery use by disabling certain nonessential features, such as Wi-Fi.

Compass Backtrack

Apart from the aforementioned additions, watchOS 9 makes the Compass app more useful. Users can now use Compass Backtrack to log their steps into the watch if they're exploring uncharted territories. This way, if a user gets lost, they can find their way back — through the detailed log on their Apple Watch.

iOS 16 introduced some major changes, especially regarding the Lock Screen. watchOS 9, on the other hand, was relatively lacking, as we had higher expectations for the smol OS. Nonetheless, we got to see some of our requests come to life in watchOS 10, such as the redesigned system apps. Going forward, Apple will be focusing on version 10, while it issues some final bug-fixing updates to watchOS 9.

  • Follow
    Followed
    Heart Rate Monitor
    Yes
    Battery Life
    Up to 18 hours
    Operating System
    watchOS 10
    Onboard GPS
    Yes
    Display Size
    324x394 (40mm); 368x448 (44mm)
    Case Material
    Aluminum

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  • Follow
    Followed
    Brand
    Apple
    Heart Rate Monitor
    Yes
    Battery Life
    Up to 18 hours
    Operating System
    watchOS 10
    Onboard GPS
    Yes
    Offline Media Storage
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  • Apple Watch Ultra
    Brand
    Apple
    Heart Rate Monitor
    Yes
    Battery Life
    36 hours
    Operating System
    watchOS 9
    Onboard GPS
    Yes
    SIM Support
    eSIM

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