The Apple Watch benefits from a bountiful selection of the best apple watch apps, which elongates its array of features beyond the standard watchOS experience.
From nook sports tracking to a wrist-based appendage of your preferred travel, mapping, and productivity apps, the Apple Watch is the best smartwatch when it comes to third-party apps.
Apple Watch apps have been kicking around for several years now, and the apps available for it are plentiful, to say the least – especially now it has its own App Store. Of course, not all the apps are great, useful, or even suited to the Apple Watch, but there are a few that are simply brilliant.
These are the best Apple Watch apps we’ve come across – the ones that hold their own on the smaller screen and deliver the information you need without you having to get your iPhone out.
There’s everything from games to productivity iwatch apps, all of which make the Apple Watch apps useful, rather than just another gadget.
It has been an amazing period for the top Apple Watch apps. If we look back, it seems like the watch has lost its sparkle, because many heavy-weighted apps are either withering or being removed from the watch.
Read our blog on iOS 14
You see, the problem was one of function – app developers spending too much time wondering ‘could we make Apple Watch apps?’ and not ‘should we…?’
When watchOS 6 landed, for the very first time Apple Watch introduced the App Store on your apple watch, thereby encouraging app developers to take the Apple Watch apps more seriously, and with watchOS 7 and the Apple Watch 6 – not to mention the iPhone 12 range – having since landed, there’s never been a better time to join the ecosystem.
No wonder, apple watch apps can enhance your experience of their own platform, the ones that make life just a little bit easier, or that have fast become genuinely essential to our daily exchanges. Therefore, time to study the brilliant reasons that one must have apple watch apps to save a lot of time and money.
Let’s check some of the best apps for apple watch:
Best exercise and workout apps for apple watch
Apple Fitness Plus
- $9.99 / £9.99 per month
Apple’s much-anticipated drive into elite fitness apps launched in December 2020. Apple Fitness Plus is one of the best apple watch apps that provide subscription-based service rather than just a normal application, but it has been designed with the Apple Watch in mind: it uses the Watch sensors to track your workouts and to respond to what’s happening on-screen on your iPhone.
For example, if your fitness trainer asks to check your heart rate, your Apple Watch will display that data; in tough workouts, it’ll display a countdown timer to help you motivate, and the optional Burn Bar tells you how your performance compares to the other people who’ve completed the same workout.
Subscriptions cost $9.99 / £9.99 / AU$14.99 per month and are also available as part of Apple One bundles. You can share your subscription with up to six family members without having to take out an Apple One Family or Premier plan.
To use Apple Fitness Plus on your Apple Watch, you’ll need watchOS 7.2 or newer versions. There’s no new app to install: apple fitness plus appears as a new tab in the Fitness app on your iPhone, and your watch will respond automatically based on the workouts and/or training you to select in the iPhone app. The app is also available for iPad and Apple TV.
Runkeeper
- $9.99 / £9.99 per month
If you are wearing the Apple Watch for fitness, Runkeeper is one of the best choices for apple watch apps to download. It lets you start the app right from your wrist, without even using your iPhone. Open the app, press “start running” and off you go. Once you’ve started running, you can check several stats, including overall time, distance covered, and pace.
Subscriptions cost $9.99 / £9.99 per month and are also available as part of Apple One bundles. You can share your subscription with up to six family members without having to take out an Apple One Family or Premier plan.
Strava
- $7.99 / £5.99 per month
Strava is among the wildly popular cycling apps in the category of apple watch apps. This run and the ride-tracking app has a standalone version for the Apple Watch, which gives basic details on eight types of activity. The opportunity to customize which data is shown would be good, but the app gets the job done and naturally syncs very quickly to your Strava account.
Subscriptions cost $7.99 / £5.99 per month and are also available as part of Apple One bundles. You can share your subscription with up to six family members without having to take out an Apple One Family or Premier plan.
Read our blog on Apple fixes iOS 14.4 issues
Sworkit
- $4.99 / £3.99 per month
The king of bodyweight exercise apps, Sworkit is known among the category of apple watch apps that builds workouts for you to follow based on four different categories – strength, cardio, yoga, or stretching. You can also choose which part of the body you want to focus your workout on, or opt for a full-body session, and set how long you want to exercise for.
The instructions on the phone app are good, but it’s even better to have them beamed to your smartwatch, which displays what you’re meant to be doing and buzzes when you need to switch up your exercise.
Subscriptions cost $4.99 / £3.99 per month and are also available as part of Apple One bundles. You can share your subscription with up to six family members without having to take out an Apple One Family or Premier plan.
Nike Run Club
- Free with in-app purchases
If you’ve chosen the Nike version of the Apple Watch, then this voguish running app is baked into it, but even if you have the regular Apple Watch, runners of all stripes should give the Nike Run Club a try.
The clear interface excels on the small screen, showing all the info you need about your run, but it’s the added extras – particularly the guided runs – that make Nike Run Club stand out. You can do training sessions where elite athletes like Eliud Kipchoge or Mo Farah talk you through the intervals or relax with runs produced in partnership with mindfulness app Headspace.
Read our blog on App Store vs Google Store
Best Apple Watch games
Lifeline
- $1
Lifeline is a good app if you are looking for a time pass kinda thing you can check this app, which is no doubt one of the best Apple Watch apps. You’ll speak with a stranded astronaut and try to unravel his predicament and secrets by choosing your responses to everything he says.
You’ll have to connect to the app on your iPhone first, but once you do, you’ll start to receive the messages on your Apple Watch, tapping each of your responses as you delve deeper into the mystery and try to help Taylor survive by giving him instructions to explore marooned ships and tell him which way to travel.
This is the first in a series of great text adventures from developer 3 Minute Games, thus, considered the best app for apple watch.
Elevate: Brain Training
- Free with in-app purchases
This may not be a game, per se, but Elevate: Brain Training will still entertain you while also making use of your amazing brainpower. With the Apple Watch app, you can enjoy over 35 mini-game activities that help you improve your critical cognitive skills, like focus, memory, processing, math, precision, and comprehension. It also gives you detailed performance tracking so you can see how good you’re doing, and it adapts to you to provide you with a level of challenge that is geared for you and no one else.
Snappy Word
- Free with in-app purchases
Snappy Word has a simple interface and only features four letters at a time. Play to make as many words as you can in 30 seconds or pick up your phone and play the same way or play until you make a mistake, with no time limit. There’s also an iMessage app that lets you challenge friends to unscramble words.
Every time the game ends, you’ll get kicked out of the app on your Apple Watch. If you’re looking for another fun, wordy time-waster, Snappy Word is great when it comes to selecting the best apple watch apps, and it’s free.
Best Finance Apple Watch apps
Wallet
- Free with in-app purchases
The wallet is Apple’s app so you can expect it to be good on the Apple Watch when it comes to choosing reliable apps for watches. Like the iPhone version, it provides easy access to boarding passes, tickets, and cards you’ve registered to Apple Pay.
Having your boarding pass and tickets on your wrist means you don’t have to mess about getting your phone out, which is always good when traveling and you can also pay using your wrist. Looking for apps for apple watch? The wallet is here!
Pennies
- $3.99
There are plenty of apps trying to help you stay on top of your finances, but we’ve taken a liking to the Pennies Apple Watch app, which lets you quickly tap in how much you’ve spent on a given budget target straight on your wrist. It means you can then track how much you’ve got left, whether that’s keeping an eye on your weekly food bill, or as we would like to imagine, your champagne bar bill.
Best Travel Apple Watch apps
British Airways
- Free with in-app purchases
If you love to travel, the British airways Apple Watch app is a must-have. It helps you get through the airport quickly and efficiently by telling you your flight details, whether your plane has landed and what the weather is like at your destination.
Citymappers
- Free with in-app purchases
Busy schedules, unreliable public transport, and a desire to be green are the prime reasons people use Citymapper on a daily basis. Citymapper’s first Apple Watch app was designed with this in mind.
It enables you to quickly see the status of nearby public transport so that you can move swiftly and efficiently through your day. This will also let you know if there are any delays or cancellations as they happen.
Uber
- Free with in-app purchases
The Uber Apple Watch app is one of the coolest apps for apple watch that allows you to request an Uber from your wrist. This app is simple but effective, giving you a few key pieces of information. You can peek into your ride on the way and see things like the driver’s name and license plate info.
Best Productivity Apple Watch apps
PCalc
- 9.99$
We’ve all had to use the calculator app on our phones at one time or another, and PCalc aims to make this experience better. With engineering and scientific notation and a paper tape, the app is useful for more than just simple calculations.
Noted
- 2.49$ monthly subscription
Noted is another app that is popular among all the best apple watch apps. It is a simple recorder that captures long interviews, lectures, and meetings. You can record with one tap, pause the recording and add Time Tags. The Time Tags are brilliant for pinpointing exciting parts of a recording so you can come back to them later.
Then you’ll be able to find that funny bit or key point in seconds and relive your favorite moments while finding the best iwatch apps.
Conclusion
Above are some of the best Apple Watch apps out of the box, but you’ll want to add a few great apps for apple watch to really make it sing. Apple’s wearable is a true marvel, and the Series 6 is the best yet, but you’ll never know just how useful it can be if you don’t expand your horizons a bit.
Just remember that there are countless potential Apple Watch apps that could improve your life, but the ones above are some of our favorites. If you’ve got a great Apple Watch app, we’d love to hear about it!
So, go ahead and explore cool apple watch apps on the App Store today!
