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The Apple Watch is getting a big new update with Watch OS 10 and there's lots to explore.

Hi, I'm Lexi, your resident watch enthusiast, and I've spent some time with the public beta of Watch OS to find the best parts to share with you. Now I've installed it on the Apple Watch Ultra, but it is compatible with the Apple Watch from the SE and Series 4 onwards. Now, quick disclaimers. This is beta software, so things are subject to change. And if you do wanna try all of these features out before the full release drops in the fall, please, please, please, please back up your devices.

You will also need to install the iOS 17 beta on the iPhone that is paired to the watch so you can check it out for yourself. And finally, you can't roll back from the beta to watchOS 9, So please proceed with caution. All right, public service announcement done. Let's dive in. So it wouldn't be a new watchOS update without a couple of new watch faces.

There are 2 new ones in OS 10, Snoopy and Palette. This 1 is Palette. I kind of like this 1. It's got 3 different color layers and they change as the time changes, as the hands go around the watch. And there's obviously lots of different colors and gradients to choose from.

I've been enjoying the Wisteria 1 that we had active just then. And the always on display is kind of nice too. And let's look at Snoopy, obviously needs no introduction. These animations are pretty cute and they change throughout the day. I also love the always on display.

And you know, everyone likes a good lie down in the middle of the day at 11 a.m. Now something that has been a huge change for me is you cannot swipe between watch faces anymore. You now have to press and hold on the screen and swipe through like so. Apple has brought over the smart stack from the iPhone using widgets straight to the watch face. So from any watch face, you can now turn the digital crown and you'll be able to see a stack of widgets that pop up like this.

You can also just swipe up from the watch face itself and you'll see the time of the clock there And all of these widgets that are gonna dynamically change throughout the day. You can also just like on the iPhone, press and hold to either remove, you can add some widgets like so, say I wanna put my heart rate up top to always see that, pop that in there. 1 other big interface change has been bringing up the control center. So obviously when you do that swipe, it now brings up the smart stack. So to bring up the control center, you just need to press the side button once.

The good thing about this though, is that say you're in, you know, any old app, this action on the side button is going to work regardless of what app you're in. So here it is, it's nice and easy. Pretty much all of the stock apps have been redesigned, not only to help fit more on the screen, but also they look and work very different in some cases. So that's just a preview of the activity app. We'll go back to that in a second.

The biggest 1 for me has actually been weather, would you believe? You can tap through now and get to different things like your actual temperature, then there's the chance of rain, the wind speed and also UV and all of the other metrics you like. It actually makes weather probably 1 of the apps that I'm going to use the most on the watch now when it was, you know, definitely just something I would glance at previously. Now the activity app, as I mentioned, also looks significantly different. We have the rings still here, but around the edge, we also have ways to get into say, like your weekly summary.

I've been lazy this week. The heart rate app also has a nice new animation. It looks a little bit more sophisticated than before. The now playing interface looks much nicer in my opinion. You see a nice thumbnail of what you're watching or listening to as well as your playback controls.

1 small but welcome change is actually switching between the grid view and the list view of apps. So if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the list, you see grid view or bubble view as I like to call it. And then you scroll all the way down to the bottom and it says list view. So you can switch back and forth really easily if that's something you like to do. If you're a cyclist or a hiker, there is a lot for you in watchOS 10, starting with cycling.

Now Apple's added a bunch of useful bike features over the years, like e-bike calorie calculations and automatically detecting cycling workouts, just to name a few. But now your iPhone can actually turn into a bike computer, kind of, sort of. So I'll show you what I mean. You can put the iPhone, say, on your handlebars and then start a cycling activity on the watch. I've set it to start on the ultra using the action button.

Now, once you start the activity, you'll see right here on your iPhone on the lock screen is this live activity show up. You can tap into it and you can see all of your metrics right here on the big screen, right in front of you. Everything is nice and big, easy to see. Scroll across to see things like your heart rates, your heart rate zones, your splits, elevation and speed. Something we've asked for for ages for the Apple Watch is being able to connect to Bluetooth accessories like power meter pedals or a heart rate chest strap.

Let's seamlessly transition to this video I shot at home with my stationary bike and power meter pedals. So depending on what you connect to it. I've connected the power meter pedals here. It's gonna add things to your Apple Watch workout like cadence, speed and power as watts to the workout. When I reviewed the Apple Watch Ultra, 1 of the big takeaways I asked for was topographic maps and less than a year later they are here which is big news.

Maybe I'm the only 1 that's excited about this but I think this is actually really helpful. They won't just be for the Ultra either so any Apple Watch compatible with a new update should get it. Now Let's take a look at how it works. I am going to go into Apple Maps and open up the map and then go and see the particular hike that I did when I was working with the Apple Watch Ultra. Okay, so I found the location where I did my hike and then I can tap into the trail itself.

Zoom in with the digital crown and then you're going to start to see your elevation markers and your contour lines right here, which is really neat, as well as any landmarks like valleys, rivers and more. And also offline maps are going to be available on the Apple Watch. This is amazing for turn-by-turn navigation and ETA, but you will need to have the connected iPhone with you. The compass app also now has a new 3D view. So we can go into it and take a look at that.

This is what it used to look like, but you can now tap this icon and get a 3 dimensional look. It's also going to show you the same waypoints like before, but it's now going to add cellular connectivity waypoints. So the last place that you had cell phone signal, it's going to show that. There's also going to be the option to have the waypoint that lets you know when you can make an emergency call if you need. Obviously nothing's going to show up now because I have signal.

So these are my favorite new WatchOS 10 features. There are plenty more to dig into though, including Name Drop. So that's when you bring your watch close to somebody else's iPhone so you can share contact details. There's also Optimized Charge Limit. That's another good 1 that was previously just on the Ultra, and now it's coming to some other Apple Watches.

So that's gonna learn your patterns and know when to charge the Apple Watch to full. There's also mindfulness, where

you can log your state

of mind because sometimes I feel slightly too very unpleasant. No, that's actually a mood you can log, I'm not making a weird joke. So I'm going to keep digging in to find more. Please drop me a comment with what else you want to know and I'll get testing. I'll see you later.