Overhauled Workout and Activity Apps Coming to watchOS 3 Update This Fall

At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote last Monday morning, the Cupertino-Company’s executives showcased a slew of enhancements coming to Apple Watch in the wearable device’s forthcoming watchOS 3 update.

We’ve seen Scribble, SOS and Breathe in action; as well as all those fancy new watch faces, and super-fast app launching. But what we’re just recently learning more about, is how exactly Apple’s newly redesigned Workout and Activity apps will work to perform their respective goal tracking duties.

For those of you who’re not so “in the know” when it comes to Apple Watch, the Cupertino-company’s wearable is home to two distinct apps — Workout and Activity, which have both been overhauled in watchOS 3 to include more customization, viewing options, as well as access to daily, weekly, and monthly activity statistics that are most important to you.

For starters, watchOS 3 will boast a newly overhauled Workout app — whereby users can track the bits-and-pieces details of their inherent workout, including aspects such as calories burned and time spent as was possible in previous versions. What’s more, not only will Apple’s overhauled Workout app display more intricate details about your current workout, but also, the information that’s displayed on screen is totally user customizable.

Via the Watch app on your iOS 10 running iPhone, you can customize the Workout view by navigating to “My Watch” > “Workout” > and finally “Workout View.” Apple will then present you with two options — “Single Metric”, which will display the general details of just one workout at a time; or “Multiple Metric”, which will display a variety of different statistics at the same time.

For instance, by selecting “Multiple Metric” from the Outdoor Run workout, Apple will present you with a list of available workout metrics to choose from — so you can keep track of (up to 5) of the following aspects of your progress, every step of the way.

Optional Metrics for an Outdoor Run:

• Active Calories Burned
• Average Pace
• Current Pace
• Distance
• Duration
• Heart Rate
• Total Calories Burned

Other workouts (such as, for example, an Elliptical workout) don’t provide quite as many Metrics to choose from — however, they are still customizable in terms of what (if anything) is displayed on screen at your discretion.

Optional Metrics for an Elliptical workout include:

• Duration
• Active calories Burned
• Total calories Burned
• Heart rate

In addition to the previous examples, Apple’s native Workout app in watchOS 3 is capable of providing you with statistics for the following workouts:

• Outdoor Walk
• Outdoor Run
• Outdoor Cycle
• Indoor Walk
• Indoor Run
• Indoor Cycle
• Elliptical
• Rower
• Stair Stepper

Apple Watch’s dedicated Workout app also gives you the ability to simply “jump right in,” so to speak, by enabling a new “Quick Start” function that will track your data for any unspecified workout.

You can also tweak certain settings in the Workout app — such as, for instance, enabling “Power Saving Mode,” which will disable certain sensors during less strenuous workouts to preserve battery life. There’s also the all-new “Auto Pause” mode, which will automatically start or stop tracking your workout when movement is either slowed down or sped up beyond a certain threshold.

All of these great workout-tracking features (and more) are coming to Apple Watch when watchOS 3 touches down later this year. However, if in the interim you want to experiment with watchOS 3 on your own Apple Watch, the public beta release of the forthcoming software will be available to the public later on this summer.

What do you think about Workout for Apple Watch? Let us know in the comments!