The 10 Best Apple Watch Apps You Should Have. People first experienced near-instantaneous information transport across large distances with the introduction of telegraphs and telephones in the nineteenth century. By the mid-twentieth century, a revolution in visual display technology had begun, paving the way for inventions such as TVs and early computer screens.
The advancement of mobile phone technology enabled worldwide communication via increasingly powerful portable computers. Finally, advances in computer technology enabled us to make our machines smaller until they were tiny enough to connect to our bodies. Wearable technologies are still in their infancy, but one device has established itself – the smartwatch.
The Apple Watch is the most conspicuous smartwatch, allowing you to finally have the spy device you fantasized about as a child. A new Apple Watch (and even one a few generations old) is way more useful than anything Dick Tracy has ever had. Still, your Apple Watch is only as good as the apps that run on it. Get these ten applications to make sure you always have the functionality you need at your fingertips. Or, at the very least, on your wrist.
1. Water Reminder
Given the importance of water to our existence, we’d all be better at drinking enough of it. However, many people of all ages struggle with remembering to drink enough water to keep hydrated. Fortunately, the Apple Watch is well-suited to provide gentle reminders to keep adequately hydrated.
The Apple Watch Water Reminder app works with your iPhone‘s Health app to help you calculate how much water you need each day depending on your body size, level of exercise, and other health parameters. The device may then send you daily reminders to help you meet your hydration target. You may schedule reminders for specified times or set up intermittent reminders that sound at predetermined intervals.
While Water Reminder is primarily concerned with ensuring you drink enough water, you may also track other drinks such as coffee, juice, or soda. The app will track the amount of water you get from each of those drinks, as well as things like caffeine and sugar consumption. Making healthy decisions can be challenging, but Water Reminder makes it a little bit simpler.
2. HeadSpace
Between our employment, family responsibilities, the news, and social media, the world can be loud, and you may need help to think properly. Yoga and meditation, frequently referred to as mindfulness, have grown in popularity in recent years, and there is a growing amount of scientific data supporting their effectiveness.
Look no farther than HeadSpace if you’re seeking a way to build mindfulness into your day. The app includes guided meditations, breathing exercises, and sleep sounds, among other mindfulness activities. You may choose from various meditations addressing specific issues, such as generic anxiety or daily aspirations, and new content is always added.
Meanwhile, there is a vast content, ranging from brief exercises to lengthy meditation sessions. You may also participate in group sessions with people from all around the world remotely. Activities are logged in the iPhone’s Health app, allowing you to see your progress over time, and having everything on your Apple Watch eliminates the distractions that come with your phone.
3. Just Press Record
The ability to record audio snippets while on the go offers a whole new world of possibilities. You may record your child’s solo during the piano concert or make a verbal agreement recording. You may leave reminders to pick up milk from the supermarket or take the garbage out to the street for collection later.
Just Press Record is an audio recording app that performs exactly what the name implies. With a single tap on your watch face, you may start, stop, resume, and terminate an audio recording. The program enables variable-speed audio playback, transcription of recordings in over 30 languages, and export recordings in WAV, AIF, and M4A file formats.
You may also start recording using the built-in Siri capability on the Apple Watch. The duration of an individual recording is unlimited, but there is a limit to the number of recordings you may actively keep on your device. You’ll have to free some space after you’ve filled it up, but you can always send those recordings to yourself for long-term offline storage. If you need to record a conversation, encounter, or thought quickly, Just Press Record is a wonderful solution that’s always at hand on your Apple Watch.
4. Hit the Island
While the components of mobile phones have gotten more efficient and smaller over time, the size of our phones has continuously increased. That’s almost completely due to our need for larger screen areas while needing our phones to fit in our pockets. Smartwatches don’t have this issue since the screen size you can comfortably fit on your wrist is limited. Of course, this implies that screen real estate is limited on all smartwatches, including the Apple Watch.
As a consequence, mobile games on smartwatches have yet to take off in the same way that they have on smartphones. Fortunately, there are a few games that have risen to the occasion and succeeded. Hit the Island is one of the greatest, and it succeeds by relying on simplicity to capitalize on what the Apple Watch has to offer.
Hit the Island is a straightforward ball and paddle game akin to “Pong” or “Brick Breaker.” The objective is to hit the Island at the top by bouncing a ball off the platform at the bottom of the screen. Your platform is controlled not by touch but by the spinning crown on the side of the Apple Watch. You get a point for hitting the Island, but the gameplay grows more difficult as you go through the levels. It’s hardly the most exciting game we’ve ever played, but it’ll keep you interested while waiting in line at the bank.
5. Citymapper
Apple Maps does a decent job of giving commuter information, whether driving or walking, but there are better solutions for those who use alternative forms of transit. If you’re planning a journey that will include buses, trains, or trams — in other words, anything on wheels that isn’t your car — you won’t want to leave home without Citymapper.
Citymapper offers up-to-date information on bus and rail routes, as well as instructions for getting about utilizing public transit, electric scooters, bikes, and other modes of mobility. Citymapper offers partnerships with several different businesses, including Uber, Gett, and even public transportation in certain areas. That is, you can receive real-time departure and arrival forecasts based on the most recent data.
Best of all, bookmark frequently visited locations such as your home or workplace to make trip planning simpler. Some content is also accessible offline, allowing you to travel comfortably even if you do not have a Wi-Fi connection. If you live in or are planning to visit New York, Hong Kong, Chicago, Toronto, Sydney, or any of the dozens of supported places worldwide, Citymapper will make sure you get there.
6. iTranslate
Fans of Douglas Adams’ famous science fiction novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” may recognize a little fish that lives in the ear canals of intergalactic castaways. The Babel fish, as it is called, feeds on everyone’s unconscious mental energy and quickly interprets speech in any language. The iTranslate app for the Apple Watch performs the same thing, but without needing to stick a fish in your ear.
iTranslate provides real-time translation between 38 languages on your Apple Watch or iPhone. Set the languages that you and your conversation partner will use before you begin speaking. When this option is chosen, iTranslate will recognize the spoken language and translate it into the receiving language. For an audio translation, tap and hold your Apple Watch while speaking, then release the button.
If you’re hoping to make friends in a foreign country, iTranslate also provides time-based greetings depending on the place of the day. You may also acquire a transcript of the conversation if you wish to revisit it later to brush up on the jargon or double-check what was agreed upon in your leisure time. ITranslate is a must-have Apple Watch app if you’re the kind of person who enjoys breaking new ground and meeting new people.
7. Drafts
You probably have yet to think of your Apple Watch as a note-taking device. It has a touchscreen, but it’s little, and writing with your fingers could be better. If you wish to keep notes on your wrist, there is a decent solution.
The draft is a useful note-taking app that works well on the Apple Watch by concentrating on what the smartwatch excels at. Instead of tapping out messages or scribbling them with a finger, Drafts records spoken communications and converts them to text using the Apple Watch microphone. Entries are saved in an inbox, which you may sort and revisit at leisure.
On the Apple Watch, the interface for accessing or modifying your notes after the fact is restricted, but the app works flawlessly with your iPhone or iPad, enabling you to record notes on your watch and pick them up later on your other devices. Drafts provide a simple way to compose a document or leave oneself a note while on the road without needing to reach for anything other than your wrist.
8. Streaks
You’ve certainly observed that many applications on your Apple Watch have limited functionality and a basic UI, yet the identical app on your phone or tablet may have more functions. Given the restricted area on a smartwatch, developers can only do a little about it, yet Streaks doesn’t suffer.
Streaks serve a single function, and it’s ideal for the simplicity of your Apple Watch. The aim is to set several tasks that you wish to do (or not complete) each day. It might be a habit you wish to build or break, as long as it’s something you can track day after day. You can fit up to six counters on your watch screen, each with its distinct symbol to define what it is.
When a certain objective is accomplished, all you have to do is tap the proper icon, and Streaks will keep your counts updated and visible. Sometimes, all it takes to keep a streak going is to test how far you can be set back. Streaks allows you to look those statistics in the eyes.
9. Deliveries
Nowadays, we do a large percentage of our shopping online. As a consequence, the majority of us are nearly constantly waiting for one or more packages to come. Keeping track of when they arrive and if you need to be there to receive them is so inconvenient that it negates the simplicity of ordering online in the first place.
The Deliveries app keeps track of your packages by providing shipping information and delivery estimates from several major package carriers in one place. Nothing is more frustrating than waiting for something you’ve purchased to find out it didn’t arrive because you weren’t there to sign it or porch pirates stole it before you came home. The simplest way to avoid this is to know when your packages will arrive.
The primary screen displays a list of all your pending deliveries, each with a countdown in days. Tapping an individual delivery from the list will lead you to another page with further information, including the current position of your shipment. Deliveries accept packages from UPS, USPS, Amazon, and other providers. Even if a certain carrier isn’t supported, you may manually input package information to keep it in the same place as everything else you’ve bought. The one disadvantage of Deliveries is that you can’t lie to yourself about your growing internet shopping issue.
10. Onefootball
If you’re a fan of European football (what Americans call soccer), or even if you wish you were, Onefootball may be your new favorite Apple Watch app. It’s your one-stop solution for everything you need about Europe’s Premier League, Championship League, FA Cup, and more.
On Onefootball, you can watch matches as they happen, streaming from inside the app, and there’s enough to enjoy even when there aren’t any games on. You may find the most recent news on players, transfers, negotiations, standings, and scores here. The built-in TV guide informs you when and how to watch matches. If you live in a different time zone or cannot watch the matches live, Onefootball can still keep you informed.
Onefootball will send you near-real-time score updates and goal notifications so you can keep an eye on the scores even when you can’t physically keep an eye on them. The Apple Watch may not be the ideal solution for viewing live football matches (or any video content, for that matter), but you can still keep up with your favorite teams while on the road.