The latest update for the Apple Watch is now ready for early adopters to take for a spin. Here’s how to download watchOS 11 right now.
While iOS 18 and Apple Intelligence were the biggest news at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2024) this year, the company also showed off some pretty significant updates for its other devices, including watchOS 11 for its popular wearables.
This year, Apple is leaving some Apple Watch models behind; watchOS 11 will only be available for the 2020 Apple Watch Series 6 and newer models, including the Apple Watch Ultra, but for those it brings a new Training Load feature to optimize your workouts, a Vitals app to help track important health metrics, and the ability to finally take a day off from closing your rings.
Apple won’t be releasing watchOS 11 to the public until later this year, likely around the same time it announces the Apple Watch Series X. However, the good news for folks who want to play with the new features early is that we’ll have quite a few betas arriving before that time comes. That begins with the first developer beta of watchOS 11, which was made available shortly after Apple’s WWDC Keynote.
Since Apple now makes its developer betas available to anyone who’s willing to sign up for a free developer account and agree to the terms, eager beavers can jump into watchOS 11 right now. However, unless you really know what you’re getting yourself into, we’d recommend waiting a few weeks. Apple typically sends out its public betas of major watchOS releases in early July, which you can count on being considerably more stable than these early developer betas.
After all, these developer betas aren’t for the faint of heart. They’re intended to let developers get their apps ready for the final release in September, and Apple only intends for developers to install them on test devices that have nothing important on them. This is true of any Apple developer beta, but you should exercise extra caution when it comes to the Apple Watch, as there’s no way to revert the wearable to a previous version of watchOS. If something doesn’t work the way you’d expect in a watchOS 11 beta, you’ll be stuck waiting until the next beta arrives for a possible fix.
Lastly, it’s important to point out that Apple’s warranty doesn’t cover devices running beta software.
