11 apps every Apple Watch owner needs

Use your watch to directly advance to the next drill, pause, and skip, also accessing heart rate monitoring apps on apple watch and calorie tracking info without a phone. Strava is one of the best fitness apps for outdoor adventurers, cyclists, runners, and hikers. With its leaderboards, maps, and more, it’s one of the most…


Use your watch to directly advance to the next drill, pause, and skip, also accessing heart rate monitoring apps on apple watch and calorie tracking info without a phone. Strava is one of the best fitness apps for outdoor adventurers, cyclists, runners, and hikers. With its leaderboards, maps, and more, it’s one of the most popular workout apps in the world.

Best Apple Watch Apps in 2025

Whether it’s turn-by-turn directions or a virtual translator, there are the best Apple Watch apps for travel. Beyond physical health, the Apple Watch can help you manage mental health. While Apple’s native Mindfulness app is useful for breathwork and reflection, these are the best Apple Watch apps for taking your mental health journey one step further. MapMyRun can be paired to Under Armour’s lineup of Bluetooth-equipped shoes for more advanced details like whether you land on the ball of your foot or your heel as you pound the pavement. We recommend this app if you want your Apple Watch to be one of the best running watches.

No more fumbling through your phone or trawling through your inbox to find them. You can even use Authy to secure Bitcoin wallets with the likes of Coinbase and others. If you need more advice on making the most of your smartwatch, check out our guide on how to use the Apple Watch and how to set up the Apple Watch to your liking. You can either manually select the language you want to translate, or let iTranslate Converse automatically detect the languages for you. The feeling of crossing an item off your to-do list (or marking as done with a tap on your wrist) is so satisfying that this app is a must-have.

Watch to 5K displays heart rate per minute, calories burned, distance covered, and average running pace on your Apple Watch’s screen. I’ve used nearly 168 apps since unboxing my Apple Watch Series 8, but my current list is a collection of apps that simplify my life and enrich my user experience. Sleep tracking on the Apple Watch is one of the top reasons to buy one in the first place. It wakes you up in the morning with a gentle wrist vibration alarm, tells you exactly how long you slept and how often you woke up, and makes it easy to change your sleep schedule as needed. For most, that’s enough, but if you want to go a step further, then you might want to check out SleepWatch.

  • Apple Watch users can log their daily diastolic blood pressure readings through the same Hypertension feature.
  • And this altimeter app is an essential tool to view your altitude or elevation with stunning landscape visuals that adjust with the time of day.
  • Before you go to bed, the Sleep Cycle app asks you to set a 30-minute window in which it can wake you up.
  • A fairly self-explanatory app, Games for Watch is a library of 10 free games for Apple Watch including Tic Tac Toe, Pass the Ball, and Pong.

The free version of the app is pretty feature packed, but you can get the premium version for even more features such as the ability to view older health data, among other things. You can install apps on Apple Watch via the watchOS app on your iPhone or directly from the App Store built into the watch. You can also enable automatic app install, so any app you add to your Apple Watch appears on your Apple Watch if there’s a compatible watchOS version for it. You can add CARROT Weather complication on your Apple Watch’s screen if you want to have quick access to weather forecast. Also, you get the option to customize how you want to display weather information on your Apple Watch.

Water Tracker

With more recent watchOS versions, starting from watchOS 6, the App Store can be accessed directly on the Apple Watch, letting users download apps without the iPhone. Streaks is the award-winning to-do list designed to mold good habits. With the capacity to track up to 24 daily tasks, it motivates users to cultivate consecutive days of completed tasks, creating powerful streaks. It’s not just about shopping; this app supports recipe imports from Safari, enables easy recipe creation, and offers a planned cooking experience. Inventory tracking keeps you informed about what’s stocked and its expiration. Premium features even allow households to share lists, recipes, and pantry statuses.

Save ideas or remember a meeting with quick access to a record button

  • It lets you use WhatsApp on your Apple Watch, send and receive messages, play and record voice messages, and even view photos in full HD.
  • Stephen Warwick is TechRadar’s Fitness & Wearables writer with nearly a decade of experience covering technology, including five years as the News Editor of iMore.
  • At $69 a year, it’s more affordable than its nearest competitor, the Arccos Caddie app, which is $155 per year and also requires you to buy a series of sensors to attach to your clubs.
  • It’s designed to make regular exercise sustainable, with no guilt-edged streaks.

When I bought the watch it never occurred to me that it couldn’t count steps. One must download an additional app and go through convoluted steps to get steps to show on a watch face that has “complications”. Still, you have to tap the screen to go to another screen that has the actual step count. Lastly, I notice what appears to be a complete lack of response on Apple’s part to any of the reviews here, and I have read a lot of them. Looks to me like there are waaay more dissatisfied reviewers than those that give the watch and/or app any positive comments.

myQ Garage & Access Control

Despite being an excellent fitness tracker, the Apple Watch is a powerful smartwatch that can help with your golf game, make sure you drink enough water, provide turn-by-turn navigation, and more. So, if you’ve just got yourself a new Apple Watch and want to make the most out of it, then you need the best Apple Watch apps, and we have curated a list of the top ones down below. On the dashboard are charts that display your heart rate data, health insights, metrics and trends, ECG, and overall heart reports. You also get access to advanced features, including Heart Rate Calibration, Smart Heart Rate Recovery, and Heart Rate Zones.

Next Apple TV Expected to Launch This Year With These New Features

Upgraded item tracker with improved range, anti-tamper improvements, and more. Apple Intelligence is what Apple is calling its artificial intelligence feature set. The Apple Watch Series 11 is minor improvement over the previous Series 10 model, offering 5G connectivity on cellular models, a slightly bigger battery, and stronger glass on aluminum models. Yet compared to the Apple Watch SE, the Apple Watch Series 11 is a considerably more feature-rich device with advanced capabilities.

CARROT Weather features 18 unique metrics related to different weather conditions, including pollen count, UV index, and temperature. Fantastical Calendar has helped me to be more productive than I would without it, and I love that it’s clean and easy to use even on the small display of the Apple Watch. Alternatively, you can choose a relevant quick reply if you don’t have the time to input a full response from scratch. You need a high level of discipline to get the most out of the Watch to 5K running app. And if you stay committed to the built-in coaching, you’ll get to a point where you can cover 5 miles on your own in no more than 30 minutes.

The app is available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac so you can keep that list of words with you wherever you go. The design is so simple there’s practically no need for any explanation. ITranslate boasts 38 languages, with the ability to automatically detect them — even in noisy environments.

Watch to 5K is an iOS and watchOS app designed to put your muscles to the test. You can use it to train hard enough to the point where you can run 5 miles and more with ease. Notably, Chronometer allows you to set and monitor your fitness goals, which you’ll find incredibly helpful if you want to lose weight, build muscles, and improve your well-being. Cronometer features an extensive database of over 1.2 million verified foods.

In case you have any questions or Apple Watch app suggestions for me, do share them in the comments below. With Authy on the Apple Watch, you can simply set up two-factor authentication for accounts like Facebook, Google, Instagram, and others. And when you need the 2FA code to log in, you can use the Authy watchOS app to get the code without needing to unlock your iPhone every time. If you’re not using two-factor authentication for your online accounts, you’re playing with fire. However, using a phone number-based OTP isn’t the best idea, which is where apps like Authy come into play.

If you’re a Google Maps user on iPhone then the Apple Watch companion app is essential. Much like Apple Maps, Google Maps on your Watch offers turn-by-turn directions, navigation for public transport, and more. Take advantage of all Google’s other features including offline maps, street view, and navigation inside big spaces like airports and stadiums. Just Press Record is another great on-the-fly recording and transcription app that gives you one-tap audio recording on your wrist. Recordings can be transcribed on iPhone or iPad into searchable text, with support for more than 30 languages.

It tells you when the currency exchange rate was last updated so you know you’re getting accurate numbers. Thankfully, the free version only limits how many currencies you can look at at a time. Tipsy Pro costs $2.99, but it is a bit hard to justify even that small amount when the Apple Calculator on Apple Watch can also calculate tips. Use the crown to control the percentage of the tip and add people to split the bill. The only major advantage Tipsy has here is extra theme customizations.


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