What health features are coming to the 2026 Apple Watches?
Health and fitness tracking is expected to remain a major focus for the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4. The most credible new feature is continuous heart-rate monitoring throughout the day, while Apple may also make further improvements to its existing health sensors and hypertension features.
More ambitious additions, including non-invasive blood-glucose monitoring and AI-powered health coaching, remain in development but are much less likely to arrive this year.
Continuous heart-rate monitoring
One of the most significant rumored upgrades for the Series 12 and Ultra 4 is continuous heart-rate data collection.
According to a report in August from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple has tested technology that would allow the Apple Watch heart-rate sensor to “continuously collect data throughout the day.”
Currently, Apple Watch takes periodic background heart-rate readings when you aren’t using the Workout, Mindfulness, or Heart Rate apps. Continuous monitoring could provide a much richer dataset, potentially improving health trends, alerts, and other analysis.
Will Apple Watch Series 12 monitor blood glucose?
Apple has been working on non-invasive blood-glucose monitoring for many years, but it remains unlikely to arrive with the Series 12.
Reports of Apple’s work on the technology date back to at least 2017, when we reported that the company had assembled a team of biomedical engineers to investigate continuous glucose monitoring.
Bloomberg subsequently reported that Apple had developed a system based on optical absorption spectroscopy and had reached the proof-of-concept stage. However, more recent reporting suggests a commercial Apple Watch implementation may still be several years away, potentially around 2030.
So while blood-glucose monitoring remains one of Apple Watch’s most anticipated future features, Series 12 is probably too soon.
What about AI health coaching?
Apple
Apple has also been developing an AI-powered health and fitness coaching system, previously reported under the name Health+.
The project has reportedly been scaled back from a single ambitious service into individual features that can be released progressively. That means some AI-powered health insights or coaching features could appear sooner, but there is currently little evidence that a complete Health+ service will debut with the Series 12.
For 2026, continuous heart-rate monitoring looks considerably more plausible than either blood-glucose monitoring or a full AI health coach.
What health features does Apple Watch already have?
The Series 11 and Ultra 3 already offer an extensive set of health features, including:
- Blood Oxygen monitoring
- ECG
- Heart-rate and heart-rhythm notifications
- Hypertension notifications
- Wrist-temperature sensing
- Cycle Tracking and ovulation estimates
- Sleep stages and Sleep Score
- Sleep apnea notifications
The Apple Watch SE 3 has a more limited health feature set and lacks Blood Oxygen monitoring, ECG, temperature sensing, and hypertension notifications.
