Apple has officially announced WatchOS 26 on June 9 at its big WWDC 2025 event, and there are some big changes coming to Apple’s smartwatch operating system. The biggest change is easily the new design language. Called Liquid Glass, the design language is part of Apple’s big push this year to unify the look of all its operating systems. So, you’ll see Liquid Glass appear across everything, including macOS, iOS, tvOS, and Apple CarPlay and Apple CarPlay Ultra.
In addition to the design, Apple has made many of its apps more intelligent with this new version of WatchOS, thanks to integration from Apple Intelligence. For example, Apple’s new Workout Buddy app contains Apple Intelligence and can give users personalized insights based on current and past fitness data. Apple says it looks at things like heart rate, pace, distance, and more. The app can also give users a “pep talk” that reminds them of recent experiences in their workouts as a way of motivating them to hit their daily and weekly goals.
The newly announced WatchOS 26 will feature a sleek new look
Officially called Liquid Glass, the new design of WatchOS introduces a very sleek new design for the platform. The design is available across apps and “enables a vibrant and expressive experience that reflects and refracts content using real-time rendering.” In other words, the “glass” elements of the design, from icons to letters and numbers, mimic the look of glass as things like light would hit it. It’s actually quite cool, and it looks pretty good on WatchOS 26.
Another really cool detail of Liquid Glass is the way things like the clock widget change based on various on-screen elements. For example, the Photos watch face has a clock with the Liquid Glass design, and the size of the numbers can change based on the photo you pick. The same thing can happen with the clock on the main screen when you have Smart Stack notifications come in.
The Smart Stack is now smarter than ever
Speaking of the Smart Stack, it’s now even smarter, with improvements to its prediction algorithms that can more precisely tailor suggestions to the user. With a new feature called Smart Stack Hints, the Smart Stack uses more contextual data, sensor data, and users’ routine data to prompt users to take immediately useful actions.
In one example, Apple says that a user who’s entered an area with no data connectivity may get a hint to open and use Backtrack to record a path. Alternatively, someone who always goes to a Pilates class at the same time and at the same location may get a hint about Pilates when the watch detects that they’ve arrived based on those parameters. Users will get their first taste of WatchOS 26, iOS 26, and other OS updates with this new design and all-new features starting in July.
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