Apple Watch series 6 and watchOS 7: Features, rumors, release date, and more

Apple has delivered a new Apple Watch every year since the original in 2015. And they’ve all been unveiled during the company’s September event, along with the new iPhones, and shipped shortly after (with the exception of the first model, which shipped in April of the following year).

We don’t expect this year to be any different. We’ll likely hear about the successor to the Apple Watch Series 5 during Apple’s big fall iPhone event. What will it have in store for us? Here we compile the latest rumors, leaks, and speculation about the Apple Watch Series 6 and watchOS 7.

Blood oxygen saturation

A report from 9to5Mac about new features found in an early version of iOS 14 describes low blood oxygen saturation notifications, similar to the current notifications for heart rate.

The hardware Apple uses to measure heart rate is a type of plethysmograph, which should be technically capable of measuring blood oxygen levels in the way some other products do (like some Garmin watches). This may be a feature limited to the new Apple Watch hardware, or it might come to some existing Apple Watches.

Sleep tracking

Apple has long been rumored to be developing sleep-tracking features for the Apple Watch. The latest report called it “Time in Bed tracking” and was just before the reveal of the Apple Watch Series 5 last year, causing most observers to think it was coming with that watch. Apple even accidentally left a reference to the “Sleep app” in screenshots for the Alarms app. Whoops!

IDG

If Apple goes another year without some sort of sleep tracking function, it’s going to look really bad—its chief competitors like Fitbit have had this for years now.

Kid watch features

You can currently link your iPhone to multiple Apple Watches, but you can only have one active at a time. Changes in iOS 14 and watchOS 7 are said to change all this. A parent can give an Apple Watch to their child, and pair it with their own phone, in addition to their own Apple Watch.

The parent would then have typical parental control features like the ability to limit contacts and music. A new feature called “Schooltime” would allow the parent to limit which apps and features could be used during certain hours (it’s unclear if this would also be geo-fenced to make the limitations active only when the child is at school).

Watch face sharing and Infograph Pro

Another new feature of watchOS 7 and iOS 14, users will be able to use the share sheet to send watch faces to other users. There are enough watch faces now, with enough customization options, for this to be a useful feature. We still would like to see a sort of “FaceKit” framework for developers to make custom watch faces, with appropriate limitations and controls in place.

Also mentioned is a new Infograph Pro face which will feature a tachymeter (a function used to measure…