After years of complaints, Apple is finally addressing some of the biggest issues with its Apple Watch Activity Rings. With watchOS 11, the company is tweaking this feature without changing its core: Making people move a bit every day.
Here’s what’s new with watchOS 11 Activity Rings:
Pause your rings: Move, Exercise, and Stand rings show your daily activity and the goal is to close them every day. But if you need to take a break, you can pause your rings for a day, week, month, or more and keep your award streak going.
Customizable Activity ring goals: Now you can adjust your Activity ring goals for every day of the week. So you get the motivation you need on the days you need it.
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Customizable Summary tab: Add, move, or remove metrics in the Summary tab of the Fitness app on iPhone — to include what matters to you most. And check out new metrics for running, cycling, swimming, and more.
The new Vitals app is coming to watchOS 11.
Apple also wants to help you understand your daily health status with a new Vitals app. According to the company, the Vitals app establishes a typical range for each of your health metrics collected as you sleep. So you’ll always know at a glance how your metrics are stacking up. A new Training Load tool also helps you see how the intensity of your workouts may impact your body over time.
Why watchOS 11 new Activity Rings are a step in the right direction
As my colleague Joe Wituschek wrote, being able to pause the Activity Rings with watchOS 11 won’t make me feel bad about myself anymore since it always felt like I should be pushing harder and harder with no pause.
While the Apple Watch was a key device to improve my fitness and well-being, I started noticing how toxic the Activity Rings had become since it always wanted to do more.
Now, I can finally set different goals throughout the week and even pause my Activity Rings without losing my streak.
We’ll discuss that further as the beta cycle of watchOS 11 advances. Until then, you can learn more about the upcoming features.