Apple is gearing up to unveil the Apple Watch Series 11 next month alongside the iPhone 17Â but it has an early treat for some existing Apple Watch owners in the US today.
Thursday marks the surprise reintroduction of the Apple Watch blood oxygen feature, redesigned for some Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 owners. The feature will be available via a software update that's rolling out now.
If you own one of these models and don't currently have access to the feature, you'll need to ensure your paired iPhone is updated to iOS 18.6.1 and that your Apple Watch is currently running watchOS 11.6.1. The updates will trigger sensor data collected from the Blood Oxygen app on your Apple Watch to be measured and calculated on your iPhone. The results can be viewed in the Respiratory section of the Health app.
The update was enabled by a recent US Customs ruling, the company noted in a blog post. "Apple's teams work tirelessly to create products and services that empower users with industry-leading health, wellness, and safety features that are grounded in science and have privacy at the core," Apple said.
Apple had previously been forced to disable Blood Oxygen monitoring in models shipped after January 2024. This was caused by an import ban sparked by a patent dispute between Apple and a company called Masimo. By shifting the measurement and calculation of blood oxygen levels from the Apple Watch to the iPhone, Apple has managed to circumvent the ban.
"This is a good demonstration of Apple's engineering ability," said Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight. "Having been blocked from using the technology it had deployed initially as a result of an import ban imposed by the International Trade Commission, it has created a work-around that has allowed it to reactivate the feature for US customers."