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Apple launches public beta for new Apple Watch features including sleep tracking

Apple launches public beta for new Apple Watch features including sleep tracking

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This is the first public beta for watchOS

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Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verg

Apple has already launched beta releases for its next big updates to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS. And today, it’s adding watchOS to the public beta mix for the first time.

The watchOS 7 update includes new watchfaces, plus easier ways of sharing them between friends and downloading custom layouts from the web. But the biggest addition this year, and this one’s worthy of a finally, is sleep tracking. watchOS 7 comes with a new Sleep app that’ll show you how many hours you’re asleep each night — though Apple isn’t yet diving into the quality of sleep and different cycles.

The Apple Watch will gain more fitness tracking with watchOS 7, including metrics for dance, functional strength training, core training, and cooldown activities. The Maps app is adding support for cycling directions, and Apple’s smartwatch will now automatically detect when you’re washing your hands and provide a 20-second timer.

There are other small-but-useful improvements like on-device dictation — making for much faster speech to text — and translation support with Siri. Apple’s website has the full list of new watchOS tricks, and starting today you can test them out yourself. Just remember that, as always, beta means beta and it’s probably best not to install the watchOS 7 public beta on your primary Apple Watch if you rely on it daily.