Tech editor Justin Connolly shares the five ways to get the most from your Apple Smart Watch, from getting a better night’s sleep to improving your mental health
Whether you’ve been weighing up ordering a smart watch or have already bought one, getting the most out of it is essential to making sure you’ve got your moneys worth from it. Smartwatches still offer the most comprehensive way to gather data about your health so you can act on the feedback and have a healthy day and a more restful night.
The king of all smartwatches today remains the Apple Watch, but are you getting the most out of yours? Aside from tracking heart rate details, sleep quality, and activity levels, the Apple Watch has several other ‘hidden’ features up its sleeve that you might not know about, as tech editor Justin Connolly shares.
1. Vitals app
When you wear your Apple Watch to sleep, the watch doesn’t just monitor your sleep patterns. It also measures heart health, blood oxygen, respiratory rate, and wrist temperature. It gathers these in the Vitals app on your watch, and in the Health app on your phone, and presents them in a clear understandable way – warning you if any of those measures look abnormal, so you can investigate and take action if you need to.
2. Wrist temperature and ovulation estimates
The watch is also your friend if you are trying for a baby. Its wrist temperature sensors can help estimate the likely ovulation date retrospectively to get a better handle on how your cycle works.
3. State of mind
The watch offers a suite of features to help with mental health. From guided breathing sessions in the Mindfulness app to helping you log your state of mind and reflect, all this info is gathered in the app. The iPhone Journal app can help you monitor your state of mind, too, for a more in-depth look at how you feel over time and the factors that may affect that.
4. Time in daylight
Head into the health app to see how much time your watch has recorded you being in daylight throughout the day. Logging the amount of time spent outdoors also offers the chance to see how that affects your health, and make adjustments when necessary,
5. Sleep apnoea notifications
Your Apple Watch can tell you if there have been repeated and regular disturbances in your breathing during sleep, to help detect one of the most undiagnosed conditions, sleep apnoea. You can then get it investigated by your doctor.
Apple Watch Series 10 is currently on sale on Amazon for £383, down from £399.
