Take your little wrist computer to the next level with these great apps.
When we think about the Apple Watch apps we just can’t live without, these are at the top of the list. Some are free, some are not, but every single one is worth your while.
Pilow is our favorite app for adding automatic sleep tracking to your Apple Watch.
If there’s one major feature missing from the Apple Watch, it’s automatic sleep tracking. Fortunately, it’s not that hard to add with an app like AutoSleep or Pillow. Of those two, we think Pillow has a better interface and more features beyond those related to the Apple Watch. It supports the new complications on the Apple Watch Series 4, too.
While technically free, you’ll really need to buy the Pillow Premium in-app purchase for $4.99 to make good use of it. Without it, you don’t get enough for a sleep history to really track your sleep trends.
Carrot Weather isn’t free, but it’s great.
There are plenty of good weather apps out there, many of which support Apple Watch, but Carrot Weather may be our favorite. It combines excellent weather forecasting (with data from Weather Underground or Dark Sky), lots of customization, a funky Augmented Reality mode, and even achievements. The snarky evil robot voice helps make weather fun.
Apple Watch support is especially robust, with several different complications available and the ability to customize them in the app. Carrot Weather was one of the first third-party apps to make use of the new corner complications on Apple Watch Series 4, and it gives you a card on the Siri watch face, too.
The only downside is that the app costs $4.99, and then for certain features you have subscribe to a Premium Club membership for $0.49 a month or $3.99 a year. The cost is to cover the increased API usage of its data sources for features like precipitation warnings.
Apple hasn’t done much with Shazam, but it’s still the best song-ID service around.
Shazam is the number one name in identifying music. I mean, it’s so associated with being able to “name that tune” that there’s even a game show with Jamie Foxx.
Apple bought Shazam in September and didn’t do anything other than remove ads from the app, which just makes it better. We figure the company has big plans for the Shazam technology, but in the meantime, it’s an excellent app for your Apple Watch. Just tap that Shazam complication and the app immediately loads up and starts listening. You can use the iPhone app to go through the history of songs you’ve found and add them to Apple Music or Spotify.
Having the ability to identify songs on your wrist makes you use it a lot more than having to pull your phone out.
