Apple’s latest watchOS 11 is already out to developers now. It packs several enhancements over its predecessor, including health tracking, fitness upgrades, live activities, translation apps, new watch faces, and it finally lets you customize ringtones on Apple Watch as well.
It seems like watchOS 11 has a new feature where an Apple Watch can now detect and log your nap times automatically, at least according to a Reddit post. Someone took a nap and found that their Apple Watch recorded the sleep data in the Health app, even though they didn’t activate Sleep Mode.
For reference, the Apple Watch currently only tracks and records sleep when it’s in Sleep Mode, or it used to before watchOS 11. If you forgot to turn on Sleep Mode, your sleep wouldn’t be accurately tracked because the watch wouldn’t measure your respiratory and heart rates enough. Even though your data might indicate you were resting, Apple Watch wouldn’t count it as actual sleep time.
Surprisingly, Apple didn’t mention the new automatic nap detection feature during last week’s WWDC presentation. While topics such as Artificial Intelligence were touched upon at length, notable additions in the watchOS 11 such as ringtone customization and automatic nap detection were missed.
By now, you might be eager to try out the watchOS 11’s automatic nap detection feature on the Apple Watch, but not everyone will get to enjoy it. Apple announced it’s ending support for three models: the Apple Watch Series 4, Apple Watch Series 5, and the original Apple Watch SE (2020).
This means that watchOS 11 requires an Apple Watch Series 6 or later. So, if you own one of these models, you’re out of luck and may need to upgrade to a newer Apple Watch model to enjoy the latest watchOS 11 features.
You can also check out our comparison, where we pit watchOS 10 against the latest watchOS 11.