At WWDC25 we launched a new type of Lab event for the developer community - Group Labs. A Group Lab is a panel Q&A designed for a large audience of developers. Group Labs are a unique opportunity for the community to submit questions directly to a panel of Apple engineers and designers. Here are the highlights from the WWDC25 Group Lab for watchOS (part 1). 1. I'm really excited about the new design system on all platforms. Liquid Glass is super cool. What do developers need to keep in mind when building for watchOS 26? To adopt the new design system, start with updating your app for watchOS 10 – If you have done so, your app will be mostly ready for watchOS 26. For more information, see Design and build apps for WatchOS 10. You can then look into Liquid Glass specific APIs to fine tune your app. This topic is covered in Adopting Liquid Glass. If you have SwiftUI views using any custom style, make sure they are still legible and fit with the new design system. 2. Something that really stood out to me were updates to the Smart Stack, with the system prioritizing Widgets when they're most relevant. Tell me more about these new opportunities for apps. Workout apps that record workouts using HealthKit may be automatically suggested on the watch face and appear in the Smart Stack without adding a widget. Relevant widgets are a great way to present information related to a date, location, point-of-interest type, sleep schedule, or fitness condition in the Smart Stack when it is relevant. Relevant widgets don't need to display a empty state view when they are not relevant. They are only shown in the Smart Stack when relevant. The watchOS 26 Design ToolKit in the Apple Design Resources includes a set of templates that you can use to layout your widgets. 3. Is the Wrist Flick gesture available to developers in the same way as Double Tap is? The system uses Wrist Flick to dismiss notifications and incoming calls, silence timers and alarms, or return to the watch face. There is no separate API for the Wrist Flick gesture. Apps that are using XCUIAutomation to make sure their user interface behaves as intended can use the XCUIDeviceHandGesture.flick to automate tests that verify that their app responds appropriately to the Wrist Flick gesture. For apps using automated testing, the XCUIDeviceHandGesture.doubleTap can be also be used to automate testing of the app with the Double Tap gesture. See XCUIDevice.perform(handGesture:) 4. Can HRV measurements be triggered on demand via API in watchOS? Guidelines or processes for enabling energy-intensive biometric sampling on development devices for IRB-approved research? You don’t have direct control on the sampling rate in watchOS. You can use HealthKit (HKQuantityTypeIdentifierHeartRateVariabilitySDNN, to be specific) to query the HRV data, once the system has sampled and persisted the data to HealthKit. If that doesn’t help, we suggest that you file a feedback report with your concrete use case for us to investigate. Specific to IRB-approved research using Apple Watch or its companion iPhone, you might want to look at this FAQ and SensorKit to see if they can be of any help. 5. What is the best advice for someone who is new to making a watchOS app that’s been on iOS and iPadOS? You can start with exploring the system experience features on watchOS, such as notifications, controls, and widgets, and getting familiar with the system spaces, like Smart Stack, watch face, and control center. Knowing the watchOS app design principles and practices is important as well. Design and build apps for WatchOS 10 is a great resource for this topic. SwiftUI is an amazing across-platform framework, and you will use it to create your watchOS app. If you're already using it, great! Keep in mind some watch-only constraints. Comparing to iPhone or iPad, Apple Watch has a limited battery and smaller screen size, which significantly impacts how people use your app and how your app works. 6. Was there any extension this year to the 7 day limit on querying Apple Health data on the watch? There is no change on the limit this year. You can get this official limit at runtime using earliestPermittedSampleDate. There are some exceptions, and so don't be surprised if you see some data types are retained longer. The companion iPhone holds the full set of the health data. If you need to access the health data that has been purged from the Apple Watch, consider doing it with your iOS app, and then passing the result to your watchOS app.

At WWDC25 we launched a new type of Lab event for the developer community - Group Labs. A Group Lab is a panel Q&A designed for a large audience of developers. Group Labs are a unique opportunity for the community to submit questions directly to a panel of Apple engineers and designers. Here are the highlights from the WWDC25 Group Lab for watchOS (part 2). 7. For widget (complication) update budgets, is there an overall budget or are scheduled update separate from APNS updates? For context I have a complication that is updated on a fixed schedule (every 20 min), but there can be times of the day that are more "interesting" where pushes make sense. Like timeline updates, the system budgets WidgetKit push notifications and delivers them opportunistically. You can use WidgetKit push notification updates as an addition to timeline updates. For more information, see Updating widgets with WidgetKit push notifications. 8. It seems like the new Control Center widgets can be sourced from either the iPhone or directly on the Watch. Can we control whether a control appears in the watch list, or will it always be a combination of all controls from both sources? iPhone controls will be automatically available on the companion Apple Watch, even if they don’t have an associated watchOS app. When an iPhone control is tapped on the Apple Watch, the action is performed on the iPhone. Controls whose actions foreground the iOS app will not appear on Apple Watch. If a watchOS app has controls, no controls will appear on Apple Watch from the companion iOS app. 9. From UI/UX perspective, what are the current practices for Designing watchOS apps that feels native. The WWDC23 session Design and build apps for WatchOS 10 covers the details of watchOS design principles and how to apply them in your app using SwiftUI. A lot of SwiftUI APIs, such as NavigationSplitView, vertical tab view, list view, and etc, already implement the look and feel native to watchOS. 10. When adopting the new design system on watchOS, it seems like the main place we will use the glass effect is for our buttons in toolbar? Standard buttons in system apps seem to continue to use a flat appearance and full width. We leave the choice to you – You can use the new GlassButtonStyle API or .buttonStyle(.glass) to apply the liquid glass material to buttons. Learn when to use the Liquid Glass styles in Get to know the new design system. 11. Is there any way to gracefully migrate extensions when their bundleIDs have to change? e.g., converting a multi-target watch app to single-target, which drops the .watchkitextension from both the app and WidgetKit ext bundleIDs Updating a watchOS app to single-target is covered in TechNote TN3157: Updating your watchOS project for SwiftUI and WidgetKit. Xcode provides a tool that can do the update automatically, and the technote describes the details about how to use it and how to clean up the project after the automatic update. If there's something that technote doesn't address, please reach out to us on the Developer Forums. 12. What is the status of WatchConnectivity? Is that still the preferred way for iOS + watchOS communications? The Watch Connectivity framework is still supported, and is appropriate for the communication between an watchOS app and its companion iOS app. The systems also provide other APIs for the apps to exchange data. For example, watchOS supports Apple Push Notification service (APNs). If data for your widget changes on your server, your widget can receive a WidgetKit push notification, and update accordingly. That’s the preferred mechanism for widget updates.

Hello, everyone! I'm seeking some guidance on the App Store review process and technical best practices for a watchOS app. My goal is to create an app that uses HealthKit to continuously monitor a user's heart rate in the background for sessions lasting between 30 minutes and 3 hours. This app would not be a fitness or workout tracker. My primary question is about the best way to achieve this reliably while staying within the App Store Review Guidelines. Is it advisable to use the WorkoutKit framework to start a custom, non-fitness "session" for the purpose of continuous background monitoring? Are there any other recommended APIs or frameworks for this kind of background data collection on watchOS that I should be aware of? What are the key review considerations I should be mindful of, particularly regarding Guideline 4.1 (Design) and the intended use of APIs? My app's core functionality would require this kind of data for a beneficial purpose. I want to ensure my approach is technically sound and has the best chance of a successful review. Any insights or advice from developers who have experience with similar use cases would be incredibly helpful! Thank you!

Are there any HealthKit related changes to be aware of in the new update that enables SPO2 / Blood Oxygen Saturation measurements on certain Apple Watch models within the US? I’m aware of processing happening on the phone…. But beyond that: Does this mean values are then saved to Apple Health? Do these models still take background SPO2 measurements in the same way as other models do? Are these values then visible in third party iOS apps as normal through HealthKit? Do these values sync back to the paired Apple Watch HealthKit store for third party apps to access on the Watch? For reference I have an iOS and WatchOS app that, amongst other features, provides the ability to see your SPO2 values in the Watch app, complications and in the iOS app.

I added a watchkit extension to an existing app. I get this error when uploading to App Store Connect. Building the archive itself is fine: Prepared archive for uploading Upload failed error: Validation failed Missing Info.plist value. A value for the key “WKApplication”, or “WKWatchKitApp” if your project has a WatchKit App Extension target, is required in “Runner.app/Watch/watch_Watch_App.app” bundle. For details, see: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/watchkit/creating_independent_watchos_apps/setting_up_a_watchos_project have the exact same issue when bundling. I added the flag manually in a additional plist fields entry with WKApplication=1 because my Info.Plist is generated and it didn't help. I wrote a custom Run Script Phase that added the flag and that didn't help as well. I need a reply from someone from Apple here. This needs to be fixed.

Hi everyone, I’m building a sports performance app for Apple Watch that uses the onboard IMU to analyze swings and impacts in sports like tennis and golf. The goal is to estimate club/racket head speed, ball speed, and shot quality in real time from wrist motion data. With Core Motion, I can currently get deviceMotion updates at ~100 Hz. While this is fine for general movement tracking, the actual ball impact happens much faster — 5–10 ms in tennis and ~0.5 ms in golf. Many of the high-frequency vibration/impact components are missed at 100 Hz, making it hard to directly measure or more accurately estimate certain performance metrics. Questions for Apple / community: 1. Is there a way to access raw accelerometer and gyroscope data at higher sampling rates (e.g., 500–1000 Hz) on Apple Watch? 2. If not, is this due to hardware limitations or an API/software constraint? 3. Are there any research, partner, or beta programs that allow deeper sensor access for sports-science use cases? Even modest increases in IMU sampling could unlock more accurate ball-speed estimates, impact force analysis, and strike-quality detection without needing external sensors — making Apple Watch a best-in-class wearable for precision sports analytics. Happy to share more about the current approach, sample data, and potential use cases if helpful. Thanks, Max

I struggling in getting Xcode Cloud to work with a stand alone watch app. This app has the following three targets and each bundle identifier is set up in the Identifiers section of the developer portal. iphone container target called Unleashed abc.xyz.Unleashed watch target called Unleashed Watch App abc.xyz.Unleashed.watchkitapp watch target called Unleashed WidgetExtension abc.xyz.Unleashed.watchkitapp.Unleashed-Widget I have a App Store provisioning set up for abc.xyz.Unleashed.watchkitapp The app runs fine in the watch simulator, but fails with the following when I do an Xcode Cloud build Export archive for ad-hoc distribution Export archive for development distribution Export archive for app-store distribution When I expand each one of these errors it reports: Command exited with non-zero exit-code: 70 I also tried archiving the project in Xcode then selected the Archive but it won't let me validate because that button is disabled. Very confused I have successfully used Xcode Cloud for a phone app but am having a problem with this watch app that has a widget

Our app has an infrequently used but useful calculator screen similar to Apple's calculator app where the current value ticker squats in the top toolbar trailing area, extending into the system clock area. In 26 beta, that view is now broken: the system clock not longer hides when a layout collision is detected. Can the prior avoidance behavior (or an API to hide the clock) be triggered somehow?

Hello everyone! I encountered a problem, Apple Watch 10, downloaded beta version 26 IOS, got tired of it, deleted in the settings to the previous IOS. As a result, now I deleted 26 IOS on the phone and can not connect the watch with the phone.

I’m developing a smart alarm app that makes use of the extended runtime session. I’ve looked at the docs, and one of the background modes for Apple watch is smart alarm. The docs also say that an extended runtime session can only be scheduled one at a time, and while the app is open, which isn’t very intuitive for an alarm app that runs on schedules. I’ve seen other apps do something similar, but I’m trying to make this fully automated, without the user having to do too much manually to reschedule the smart alarm. Is there no way to do this? I would’ve thought the smart alarm background modes would allow to schedule more than 1/a repeating extended runtime session.

I'm trying to update the icon of my app for watchOS 26, and I'm having troubles providing both a layered Liquid Glass icon for watchOS 26 users and a pre-rendered bitmap icon (in various sizes) for watchOS 11 and older users. Whatever I do; I either get a blurry, scaled-down watchOS 26 icon on watchOS 11; or watchOS 11's bitmap icons on watchOS 26. While I could get the wanted result on macOS 26 and iOS 26, I simply can't get an equivalent result with watchOS 26.

Hello developers, Now I'm facing a issue with a image alingment on watchOS app. As you see below, I load a UIImage on a view of watchOS app using SwiftUI and would like to fill the watch screen fully with the image. (That's why I added '.ignoreSafeAre()' modifier) As expected, the image fills the screen but the image is aligned to the left only in case of a landscape image (width > height). I tried anything I imagine, but all failed. Can anybody give a hint or advice to solve this issue? Many thanks in advance! ZStack{ Image(uiImage: image) .resizable() .aspectRatio(contentMode: .fill) .ignoresSafeArea() .scaleEffect(zoom) .offset(...) .gesture(... }

I’m building a standalone Apple Watch smart alarm app that should trigger alarms on the watch in response to Bluetooth or internet events. This means the app operates in the background and attempts to trigger an alarm when such an event occurs. As far as I know, the appropriate API for this is WKExtendedRuntimeSession.notifyUserWithHaptic:repeatHandler. However, I can’t seem to start an extended runtime session while the app is in the background. I’m getting the following error: -[WKExtendedRuntimeSession _invalidationReasonAndDelegateCallbackErrorForError:outCallbackError:]:729: WKExtendedRuntimeSession hit internal error. Error Domain=com.apple.CarouselServices.SessionErrorDomain Code=17 "startSession cannot be called on a scheduled session" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=startSession cannot be called on a scheduled session} Calling notifyUserWithHaptic directly also similarly fails. It seems notifyUserWithHaptic is intended to be scheduled during a foreground session to trigger at a later time, rather than being called ad hoc from a background context. Is there any way to create a proper alarm view on the Apple Watch from a background execution context?

I updated my IntentWidgetProvider recommendations() to return an empty array instead of all my previous static IntentRecommendation to allow my widgets to finally be configurable. When I go to the watch widget chooser I see samples of my widgets OK: But when I touch the sample would should bring up my configurations, I get "Unable to Load": Anybody see this or have any ideas? Thanks.

I'm trying to run(debug) an Xcode watch app project on my watch. My phone is connected to my computer via USB cable, my watch is paired to my phone. When I open Xcode and then open "Devices and simulators", I can see my phone properly connected. But these errors show up for my watch........ Apple Watch may need to be unlocked to recover from previously reported preparation errors Ensure the device is unlocked and associated with the same local area network as this Mac. A connection to this device could not be established. Timed out while attempting to establish tunnel using negotiated network parameters. I have booted computer, phone and watch. I have turned wifi off and on, on all 3 devices. I have turned developer mode on the watch off and then back on again. Anyone have any ideas how to fix this?

Has anyone seen the workout buddy options on watch OS yet? I am not able to get it on my watch. My setup is an iPhone 16 and Watch Ultra 1 with the 26 OS I am currently using beta 3. English US language on both and US as region. I am located in Germany though. I restarted both devices multiple times without any changes. Hopefully someone can help.

Developing a standalone app for the Apple Watch. Unless I turn off Bluetooth on the paired iPhone, the Apple Watch’s Wi-Fi deactivates every ~30 seconds, which causes the connection to Xcode to drop. How is this supposed to work? I can see my app’s logs in Xcode, but I can’t view any other system logs from the Apple Watch. I tried using the Console app, with the iPhone connected via USB, trusted, etc, but I don't see any system logs. How can I access full system logs? Thanks!

Hi developers. I've been working on a Watch companion app for my product these past few days, and I'm currently trying to push it to TestFlight. I get stuck at the validation step with endless errors. The first one typically is missing WKApplication in Info.plist. That's fine, I'll add the field in Watch target > Info. Now more errors appear: Invalid UIDeviceFamily value of '1' and '2' Unsupported key UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities DTPlatformName value invalid Missing architecture, the bundle must contain arm64_32 because it's built with watchOS SDK 5+ I never set these values in the Info tab, so my guess is they're being overwritten by the Runner Build Settings, even though watch target build settings are correct (for example, Targeted Device Family is set to Apple Watch). What I've tried so far: Disabling auto generation of the Info.plist, and manually setting UIDeviceFamily to '4', but that doesn't help, unless I do it after creating the archive by editing the archive files and resending it to validation. I also tried a bunch of other post-build modifications to try and fix all the errors but new ones kept popping up. Cleaning Build Folder and DerivedData, restarting XCode, rebooting the computer... no effect, which is expected given that the building process doesn't return any errors Validating just the app without the apple watch (so from my main branch), still works as expected. Recreating a blank watchOS target and trying to validate just that, I get stuck in the same way. Project details: XCode Version 16.3 (16E140) Flutter 3.27.3 Targeting latest watchOS and iOS 16+ Do you have an idea what could be the problem here ? I'm sure it's just a missing or invalid property in some configuration file, but I can't figure it out and there are no resources online documenting the issue, and no "tutorials" on how to properly set up a watch target from Apple. Thank you for your time. A.H.

On Apple Watch, I have used toolbarForegroundStyle view modifier to change the color of the navigation title programmatically to offer theming support for users. In watchOS 26 it no longer seem to have any effect. For example with .toolbarForegroundStyle(.blue, for: .navigationBar) the title color still uses the AccentColor from the Assets catalog. Is there any other setup required to get this working, or is it a bug? Filed a feedback FB18527395

as a beta tester I am trying to explore the OS on multiple platforms like iO, iPadOS, MacOS, WatchOS. While on trying to use beta 1 have few issues and reported to Apple with analytics as I do for better improvements. But, in beta 2 there is an issue of glitches on UI. This also tried to report. But, while am trying record screen I can not see in that video after the screen record. But, in reality I can see that glitch with eyes. as everyone know without evidence we can not report the same with tickets properly and they also can not resolve the issues. It’s affecting on all types of OS platforms of Apple buttons and search positions etc. one more thing I absorbed is while am trying use overlay player and browse the safari or any apple developer apps which are full screen the devices are freezing and not responding and after hard restart those are starting after 10mins. As per my knowledge. Those are going through the memory overflow issue.