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watchOS 27 Will Add These New Features to Your Apple Watch

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Apple will unveil watchOS 27 during its WWDC 2026 keynote on Monday, June 8, and a handful of new features have been rumored already.

Apple-Watch-Ultra-2-Black-Titanium.jpg

The first developer beta of watchOS 27 should be available immediately following the keynote, and a public beta typically follows in July. The update should be released to all users with a compatible Apple Watch model in September.

Below, we recap watchOS 27 rumors so far.

Improved Heart Rate Tracking

In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said watchOS 27 will include improvements to heart rate tracking, but he did not elaborate.

New Modular Watch Face

watchOS 27 will add new watch faces, including a variant of the "Modular Ultra" watch face that is currently exclusive to the Apple Watch Ultra, according to Gurman.

New Apple Intelligence Features

On watchOS 26, the following Apple Intelligence features are available on an Apple Watch when it is paired with an iPhone 15 Pro or newer:
  • Workout Buddy
  • Live Translation in Messages
  • Notification Summaries
When it announced the dates for WWDC 2026, Apple promised to unveil "AI advancements" across its platforms, and it can be reasonably assumed that watchOS 27 will include some additional Apple Intelligence features powered by the iPhone.

New Satellite Features

Apple Watch Ultra 3 has built-in satellite connectivity, enabling Emergency SOS, Find My, and Messages via satellite without any reliance on an iPhone.

iOS 27 will reportedly include up to five new satellite features, and the following two would likely extend to watchOS 27:
  • Apple Maps via satellite
  • Photos support for Messages via satellite
Amazon last month announced plans to acquire Globalstar, the satellite company that powers Apple's satellite features on the iPhone 14 and newer and the Apple Watch Ultra 3. In turn, Amazon announced that it has signed an agreement with Apple to provide satellite connectivity for current and future iPhone and Apple Watch features.

Stability Focus

Apple is largely focused on "stability, performance, and smaller refinements" for watchOS 27, rather than on major new features and capabilities, according to Gurman. This suggests that the update could include many bug fixes.

Article Link: watchOS 27 Will Add These New Features to Your Apple Watch
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/24/watchos-27-rumored-features/
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HAHAHA I think I will stay with my apple watch series se 1 until it DIES... Damn another year with useless features... The only thing I really liked was watchOS 10 and then extra support for ski in watchOS 11 (that I don't have) but yeah no **** that I upgrade yet...
 
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This would be so pathetic if the improvements are limited to this.

The Health features lag WAY behind Oura and Whoop. Don't need to go all the way to what they have but the best we currently have is "You had a fine night of sleep" what it was obviously horrible.
 
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Legar said:
I’m not buying until we get decent battery life like Garmin watches.
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Interesting. What watch do you use? I have found AW battery life "decent" enough for me since v1 AW and now since v1 of the AWU. My recent watches have always just magnetically charged while I showered every day.

Please do not tell me about how some watch you do not own has a long lasting battery. Who cares? For many of us the AWU is all around preferable. If a Garmin suited my needs I would buy a Garmin.
 
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GfPQqmcRKUvP said:
This would be so pathetic if the improvements are limited to this.

The Health features lag WAY behind Oura and Whoop. Don't need to go all the way to what they have but the best we currently have is "You had a fine night of sleep" what it was obviously horrible.
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Yes. The Sleep app flat lies. Last night I was an hour late getting to bed, woke up frequently and was up early, 6 hours total. I was wondering why I had a lousy night's sleep and the watch chimed up and told me what a good sleep I had, 99/100. The first time I ever saw 90+ despite many very good nights of sleep.
 
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While we're apparently not getting the Ultra watch face on non-Ultra watches, it's at least something. I am prepared for something, much, much worse than what was described.

Apple seems to take a lot of inspiration from analog watches, but very little from digital watches. Looking at the Ultra face, I have to wonder why they didn't make the seconds smaller than the hours/minutes.
 
dominiongamma said:
Wake me up when Apple Watch hits a week worth of battery life
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Why do you feel you need a week of battery life? If you intend it for backpacking the AW is the wrong tool. Otherwise a daily magnetic charge while showering works quite well for many of us. Personally for basic hygiene reasons I do not want any watch on my wrist for more than ~23.5 hours at a time; sometimes I switch wrists as well.
 
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Allen_Wentz said:
Interesting. What watch do you use? I have found AW battery life "decent" enough for me since v1 AW and now since v1 of the AWU. My recent watches have always just magnetically charged while I showered every day.
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I wonder if I’m in the majority or the minority when it comes to being relieved to take my watch off before I go to bed after having it on my wrist for 15 hours? Seems my battery problems have already been solved a long time ago considering I can get 24 hours on a full charge. AW 10
 
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Looking forward to seeing the new watch faces. Satellite features will be available only in the US at launch and will take a long time for international expansion.
 
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Allen_Wentz said:
Why do you feel you need a week of battery life? If you intend it for backpacking the AW is the wrong tool. Otherwise a daily magnetic charge while showering works quite well for many of us. Personally for basic hygiene reasons I do not want any watch on my wrist for more than ~23.5 hours at a time; sometimes I switch wrists as well.
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“Why do you need a car with a big enough fuel tank that goes multiple days? You can easily refuel every day?”

Such a dumb question.
 
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If they offer a variant of the Modular Ultra face that works on other watches, they’d better add another Ultra exclusive to replace it.

Don’t care about the satellite features. I have T-Mobile with Starlink that works over 5G direct to satellite.

Apple Intelligence will power the additional Health features using models that Apple published papers on.
 
ifxf said:
For a release that is supposedly focused on bug fixing and tuning, Apple is adding a lot of new functionality.
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It’s because the release *isn’t* about “bug fixing and tuning”. That’s done during every release, and was just more nonsense made up by the tech press to farm engagement.
 
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