Of course, Watchos 26 provides Apple liquid looks to your wrist, a `training boyfriend ” to give you a vote of trust or a boost to hit a personal record during training, and a lot of new messages of messages. Everything that is cool, but it is one of the most fundamental updates that have the most jazzed me, and I have already had the chance to try it.
If you are like me, when an alert alert dam afterwards, or really all the notifications that are not super urgent, I will feel the buzz on my wrist and I ignore it or I place the palm of my other hand on the Apple Watch to reject them. So far, it has worked well, but Apple’s last gesture has made things go by at the next level.
The “wrist film” is precisely what it looks like – when a notification arrives, you will simply turn your wrist back to reject it. You can also use it to take a step back anywhere in the Apple Watch interface, or to close or silence incoming calls, whether cellular or facetime.
So say that you check the weather app for forecasts but you have to go back, you just run the wrist twice. Once, brings you back to the launcher, and another brings you back to your watch face.
He will join Double TAP when he arrives with Watchos 26, which should arrive this fall (probably in September or October). Although it is available in the beta developer now, it will be shipped with the public beta version, expected this month, July 2025.
To be clear, the developer’s beta version is what the name implies – it is a first version of the software and is not recommended for installation on your main device, as you can expect at bugs, slowdowns, accelerations and instability. Simply, it is not final software, but rather an early look.
In my quick demo to Apple Park in a briefing after the WWDC Keynote, I quickly had the range to use the “wrist film ”, and I suspect that once it will arrive at your wrist, it will become a daily habit. It is simply a question of associating something that you expect with a gesture, which facilitates navigation on the Apple watch without having to touch the screen or reject one or two notification.
You will need a relatively new Apple Watch to see “the bracelet stroke” appear with the Watchos 26 update: it will work on the Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10 and Apple Watch Ultra 2.. Interestingly, there is no support for the Apple Watch is or the Apple Watch Origin, because the functionality requires the S1 or S10 chip. For some, it could be a reason to switch to a more recent Apple Watch.
Other features
I am enthusiastic about the “ wrist film ”, but in Apple’s eyes, this is probably not one of the flagship additions for Watchos 26. There is also “ workout Buddy ”, that I could see in action – this upgrade only requires Apple Watch to be associated with an Apple compatible iPhone.
In a demo, I saw the coach propelled by AI speaking in a style similar to some of the best fitness coaches + (shouting at Jessica Skye), who were used to train the model. They work at key moments during training: at the beginning to prepare the ground, in the middle at various milestones and at the end.
The functionality is there to provide a boost sometimes, but even more a dose of encouragement. The coach I heard was very energetic; She knew the day and time, noting that we were going to a training session on Monday evening, and in the end told me that I brought her home. It is a great upgrade, which, for me, I think I will take more.
There is also the liquid glass interface and intelligent advice – subtle icons that will appear at the bottom of your watch face or at the top of the interface, suggesting actions. So if you use the Camera app on your iPhone, a notification on your wrist could remind you that you can control the shutter this way.
Everything meets for a convincing software upgrade for Apple’s main laptop, but I think you will find that the wrist film is out of competition. And if you want to have an Apple Watch capable of this functionality, thanks to Amazon Prime Day 2025 on the horizon, there is an agreement to have: the Apple Watch 10 series is back at the lowest price we have seen.
