At the weekend, it became known that the new Apple Watch will be able to determine blood oxygen saturation, which should be extremely important for maintaining a healthy heart and brain. But it is not the only change expected in the next generation of Apple smartwatches running watchOS 7. Other leaked iOS 14 code snippets helped discover even more new features, including watch face sharing, sleep tracking, parental control, and more.
A new watch face sharing feature will allow users to share specific configurations using the watch app. The watch face configurations will be available in the form of unique files. They can be previewed in the Files app and accessed in various ways as well, including with AirDrop on an iPhone. It may be the beginning of support for third-party watch faces in the future.
A new version of the watch face called Infograph Pro will appear in watchOS 7. A new element – a tachometer – will be its key feature. It is an analog of the clock scale located around the watch face, which is used to measure speed and distance as a function of travel time. Apple will allow you to create personalized watch faces using photos in shared albums as sources of images. Users will also be able to create a collaborative album for managing photos on the dials of their loved ones.
watchOS 7 will be a useful update for parents who can set and manage their children's watches using their iPhones. However, only one watch can be used at a time, and each watch is tied to the same account as an iPhone. Also, parental control involves the management of trusted contacts and music, and the Schooltime function will allow parents to control which apps can be used at certain hours, for example, during classes.
The built-in sleep tracking feature found in the iOS 14 code will offer goals as well as recommendations for improving the duration and quality of your sleep in the Health app on an iPhone. New switches for sleep mode and noise detection are also expected to appear in the control center of the Apple Watch (and probably iPhone). Finally, the architecture of Apple Watch apps will be changed in watchOS 7. No more iPhone companion apps required, but apps are still based on the previous extension architecture.
