Best Apple Watch apps in 2024

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Best Apple Watch travel apps Best productivity Apple Watch apps Best information Apple Watch apps Best health and fitness Apple Watch apps Best Apple Watch games Best finance Apple Watch apps Best smart home Apple Watch apps

There’s an app for that. It’s a phrase that goes all the way back to the launch of the iPhone 3G back in 2009. However, it’s never been more accurate: there’s an iPhone app for almost any use case you can think of. It’s also true of the Apple Watch.

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You might think that the small screen of an Apple Watch isn’t really suited to apps, but the truth is there are many apps that make the most of the form factor. If you’re ready to make your Apple Watch even more useful, then here are some of the best Apple Watch apps you can download right now.

Best Apple Watch travel apps

Citymapper

If you live in a city, Citymapper’s Apple Watch app allows you to quickly see the status of nearby public transport with the press of a few buttons. It can also provide directions from your current location to a work address, or any other pre-set address. You can see real-time departures too. Quick and simple.

Apple Maps

You may prefer to use Google Maps on your iPhone, but Apple Maps really comes into its own on Apple Watch. You can ask Siri to direct you to a location and the app will open, find the location and give you the option to press start. It will then provide step-by-step instructions, vibrating to alert you when the next turn is coming up. No iPhone necessary.

iTranslate Converse

The original iTranslate app is useful if you want to know how to say a particular phrase in a foreign language, but it’s not much use if you want to hold a conversation. iTranslate Converse solves that problem by listening to two different languages and translating between them, allowing two people who don’t speak the same language to hold a conversation. Not only will you see the spoken phrase translated into the target language on your Apple Watch, but it will also speak the phrase in that language too. The app will even flip the text upsides down, so you can show the translation to the person you’re speaking to without twisting your arm.

Elk

When you’re abroad, you want to know how much everything costs. Elk allows you to do quick currency conversions directly on your wrist. It uses location data to automatically select the right currency for you, along with a starting value. You can then swipe left to increase the values, swipe right to decrease them or tap on a value for more accuracy. There is a free version, as well as a paid-for version with access to all currencies.

Best productivity Apple Watch apps

Streaks

Sometimes, all you need to be more productive is a little motivation. Streaks offers that by allowing you to build streaks of successfully completed tasks. Once you’ve built them up, you won’t want to break them. You can add daily, weekly and time-based tasks. You can check off your streaks and see which are still outstanding right from your Apple Watch.

Grocery

It’s one of the most thankless tasks in the world, and it keeps coming back round every single week. If shopping for food drives you up the wall, then Grocery can help. You create shopping lists by adding individual items or entire recipes, and the app will learn the order that you buy them and place your items in the perfect order for grabbing them off the shelves. You can also share lists with others and pester your significant other to buy some chocolate when they’re at the checkout.

Todoist

If you’re a fan of to-do lists, then the Todoist app allows you to add one to your Apple Watch face. You can create multiple individual lists for each project, schedule tasks for the future, group them by tags, and much more. Checking off your completed tasks on your Apple Watch can be incredibly satisfying.

Just Press Record

Do you ever come up with a brilliant idea, then forget about it five minutes later? Just Press Record makes this a thing of the past. Tap the button on your Apple Watch, and it will start recording audio. Say whatever it is that you want to note down, and the audio will be transcribed and magically appear on your iPhone. It’s truly like magic and can save you a huge amount of frustration.

Duo Mobile

Keeping your accounts safe from hackers is a real challenge, with huge numbers of data breaches happening every year. Two-factor authentication can help keep your accounts protected, but having to find the codes can be a pain. Duo Mobile lets you see your 2FA codes from multiple accounts directly on your watch, making signing in to your accounts a breeze.

Weather

One of the best apps for Apple Watch used to be Dark Sky. It was an incredibly accurate, local weather app that could alert you when it started raining or give you minute by minute forecasts. Apple bought the company in 2020, and shut it down at the end of 2022. Since then, the tech giant has integrated much of Dark Sky’s tech into its native Weather app. Whilst not quite as good as Dark Sky, Apple Weather is still a useful app to have on your Watch.

Carrot Weather

If you find talking about the weather tedious, then Carrot Weather may be just the breath of fresh air you need. That’s because you can change the personality of the app to get forecasts that are a little bit different. Professional forecasts appear just like any weather app, but settings such as Snarky, Homicidal, and Overkill provide increasingly offensive summaries. It’s an impressive feat to have made the weather fun.

Air Matters

Air pollution has been linked to premature death, so knowing your local air quality is important, to say the least. With Air Matters you can see an Air Quality Index (AQI) for your location on your Apple Watch. What’s more, if you suffer from allergies, you can also see data on the pollen count for various types of plants that can cause allergies, so you’ll always know if it’s safe to leave the house.

Night Sky

Have you ever looked up into the night sky and wished that you knew what any of those tiny little dots of light actually were? Stars, right? Or is that one a planet? Wonder no more; with Night Sky you can point your Apple Watch in the direction of some stars and see which constellation they are part of, or whether one of them is in fact a planet. There’s even a dedicated Apple Watch face you can install that’s packed with useful stargazing info.

FotMob

If you’re a soccer fan, then the FotMob app will ensure you never miss a goal again. You can see live match scores, scoring alerts for your favorite teams, and the latest transfer news straight from your wrist. The app covers over 300 leagues, including the Premier League, Champions League, and MLS, as well as international competitions such as the World Cup and Women’s World Cup.

ESPN

If you’re looking for broader sports content, then the ESPN app allows you to select the sports and teams that you want to follow. The app covers sports including football, cricket, tennis, golf, basketball, MMA, and even eSports. You can follow live scores or get alerts during a game for your favorite teams.

News

If you want to keep up with the news, then Apple’s native News app is an easy way to get the latest headlines on your Apple Watch. You can scroll through the top stories and bookmark any that catch your attention. These will then be found in your Saved Stories on your iPhone for you to read at your leisure.

Haptik

If you’re a musician, staying in time is vital, especially if you’re performing with other musicians. Metronomes can help, but when you’re playing live it’s hard to hear a click track, even with headphones. Haptik solves this problem by putting the metronome on your wrist. You can set the beats per minute and feel the tempo tapped out on your wrist. You can even sync with other Apple Watch users, so an entire band can play to the same beat.

Phone Buddy

Do you ever find yourself halfway to where you’re going before you realize that you left your iPhone at home? If so, Phone Buddy may be just what you need. The app uses Bluetooth to monitor how far apart your iPhone and Apple Watch are. If the distance grows too far, you’ll get a notification on your Apple Watch, letting you know that you’re leaving your iPhone behind. You can even stop the alerts when you’re iPhone is connected to your home Wi-Fi network, so you don’t get constant alerts at home.

Best health and fitness Apple Watch apps

Activity/Workout

In recent years, the Apple Watch has become a great tool for staying fit and healthy. Despite a wide range of fitness and health apps, the wearable’s built-in Activity and Workout apps are still excellent options. The concept of closing your rings has persuaded many of us to stand up one more time or do a few more minutes of exercise to ensure that we don’t break our streak. The Workout app also provides tracking for a huge range of exercise types, including popular exercises such as running, cycling, and walking, but also more niche options such as archery, skipping, and even the popular pickleball.

Strava

If you’re a runner or a cyclist, then the chances are you’ve heard of Strava. It’s a hugely popular workout app that allows you to track a huge amount of data about your workouts. However, the platform’s biggest selling point is its social aspect. You can find routes created by other users, and even try to get on the leaderboard for the fastest time to complete a section of a route. There are also tracking options for a wide range of other activities.

Fitbod

If sculpting the perfect body is your goal, rather than simply maintaining your fitness, then Fitbod can help. The app provides personalized training plans that are based on your current abilities and adapts them to your progress, keeping track of what muscles you’ve used and recovery time. You can log your sets and reps directly on the Apple Watch, so you don’t need to worry about fiddling with your phone while you’re working out.

Thirstic

There are many apps out there to encourage you to stay hydrated. However, most of them simply track your progress towards a daily total. You could drink your full quote at the start of the day and not drink again all day, and your app would praise you for meeting your target. Thirstic is a little different: it takes into account your activity levels and the local weather to provide personalized reminders. As a result, it does a better job than most ensuring you remain hydrated throughout the day.

Wakeout

A sedentary lifestyle is bad for your health, and a trap that is hard to avoid if you’re not mindful. At work, many of us tend to spend all day in a chair, and with the rise of working from home, you don’t even have to leave your seat for meetings. Wakeout aims to fix this problem by encouraging you to perform short bouts of exercise throughout the day. The latest version includes a new Sedentary Index which gives you an instant measure of how sedentary you’ve been so far each day. The Apple Watch app allows you to follow exercises directly from your watch face, and can remind you when it’s time to get up and move.

Go Poop

One of the best uses for an Apple Watch is for logging information, since you always have the device with you, no matter where you are. Apps such as MyFitnessPal and Cronometer let you log your food, but Go Poop lets you keep track of what comes out rather than what goes in. This isn’t as gross as it sounds; tracking your movements can be a good way to monitor your health, and can be useful to provide information to health professionals.

Best Apple Watch games

Lifeline 2

The basic controls of an Apple Watch mean that it’s not ideal for gaming, but there are some apps that provide a genuinely engaging gaming experience nonetheless. Lifeline 2 is one of them. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure game in which you receive messages on your Apple Watch and select a response to move the story forward. The game occurs in real time, so messages will appear throughout the day, and you don’t need to respond to them until you’re free. It’s a genuinely gripping game that works brilliantly on the Apple Watch.

Rules!

Rules! is a deceptively simple game that is incredibly addictive. You’re given four numbered cards with a rule to follow, such as to tap them in descending order. Easy enough, but then you get another rule, such as to tap the bottom right corner, which you have to complete first, and then tap the remaining cards based on the first rule of descending order. Each level adds a new rule, and trying to keep track of them all in your head becomes increasingly challenging.

Elevate

Brain training games are a popular way to keep your mind sharp. Elevate is a fully-fledged iPhone app, but you can tackle some of its games on your Apple Watch. You can test your spelling, vocabulary, and math skills on your Apple Watch, and track your performance against other people in your age group.

Pocket Bandit

Your Apple Watch has very few physical controls, but Pocket Bandit makes clever use of the most obvious one: the digital crown. In Pocket Bandit, you try to crack safes by rotating the digital crown. Haptic feedback tells you when you’re close to the correct number, but you have to crack the full combination before the time runs out. It’s a very clever use of the Apple Watch hardware.

Mindkeeper

If you think that your Apple Watch is only for playing basic games with simple graphics, then think again. Mindkeeper is an incredible looking game in which you need to locate gems within a mansion in order to activate the portal that will take you to the next level. Your character walks forward automatically, but you can change direction by rotating the digital crown. It quickly becomes second nature, and you can lose yourself in the game and forget that you’re actually playing it on your watch.

20 Watch Games

If you want to go oldschool, then 20 Watch Games app is for you. It’s a collection of classic games from yesteryear that work really well on the small screen of your Apple Watch. The bundle includes a version of Minesweeper, Snake, Pong, Sudoku, and more. The quality is variable, but the better games are genuinely good fun.

Best finance Apple Watch apps

Stocks

If you’re not interested in finance, then the Stocks app has traditionally been a bit of a burden; up until 2016 it wasn’t even possible to remove Apple software from your iPhone. If the first thing you do every day is check the FTSE index, however, then the Stocks app is your friend. On your Apple Watch, you can view the current price of popular stocks, add your favorites to the mix, see charts of the price over a day, month, or year, or even add a complication showing the current price right on your Apple Watch face.

Wallet

There are some apps that truly make you feel like you’re living in the future, and the Wallet app on Apple Watch is one of them. You can add bank or credit cards to your Wallet and pay for things with Apple Pay just by tapping your Apple Watch on the NFC card reader. You can even pay for journeys on major public transport systems such as the London Underground or New York subway. In addition, you can add plenty of other things to your wallet, such as concert or cinema tickets, your driver’s license, and even digital hotel keys.

Pennies

If you find yourself overspending on certain categories, such as eating out, then you might need to set yourself a budget. The Pennies app can help. You can set individual budgets for the month for things such as food shopping, clothing, eating out, or whatever else you want to add. You can quickly add your spending to the app on the Apple Watch and see how much of your budget remains. It’s a simple way to stop yourself from spending too much.

Best smart home Apple Watch apps

IFTTT

IFTTT stands for If This Then That. It’s a powerful platform that allows you to integrate a wide range of smart home platforms and create simple automations. For example, with IFTTT you can program your home’s Philips Hue lights to turn red when someone activates your Ring Doorbell. On Apple Watch, you can set up buttons to trigger automations, and control your smart home from your wrist.

Home

If you own devices that are compatible with Apple HomeKit, then Home is the app that you use to control them. You can add a wide range of HomeKit compatible devices, such as smart thermostats, Philips Hue Lights, smart plugs, video doorbells, and more. The Home app allows you to control your connected smart devices from your Apple Watch. You can turn on your TV or open your blinds with a tap.

HomeRun 2 for HomeKit

If you find the Home app a little restrictive, then HomeRun 2 for HomeKit will open up a whole world of possibilities. You can add complications to your Apple Watch that will trigger HomeKit devices, and you can use HomeRun 2 to change those complications throughout the day. When the evening draws to a close, the complication on your Apple Watch face can change to your ‘everything off’ button, ready for you to put your home to sleep.

Shortcuts

The Shortcuts app is another native Apple app that allows you to create complex automations that can utilize apps installed on your iPhone. These automations can control your smart home devices, such as your Hue lights, without requiring you to add them to your HomeKit set up. You can then activate these automations from a button on your Apple Watch, or by asking Siri.

Home Assistant

If you want to turn your Apple Watch into a true smart home powerhouse, then the Home Assistant app opens up almost limitless possibilities. The app won’t do anything on its own, however; you’ll need to set up a Home Assistant server and add devices to the system, and there’s a reasonably steep learning curve. Once you have, however, you can do almost anything you can imagine, from seeing the humidity in your bathroom as a complication on your watch face, to asking your Apple Watch to switch your TV on the next time you enter the room.

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Author (if provided): Adam Davidson

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