Apple Health app redesign brings new Readiness metric for Watch 12

Readiness is a daily score from 0 to 10 that tells you how ready your body is for exercise. It combines your recent activity, sleep score and vitals into one number, and pairs it with one of four short labels: Recover, Pace Yourself, Ready, or Go For It.

The score only works on the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, because it depends on the upgraded health sensors in those models. Owners see it both on the watch and in the Health app’s new Insights tab. The Series 12 starts at $399 and the Ultra 4 at $799 in the US.

Apple says the goal is to help you decide whether to take a recovery day, train as usual or go harder. Some critics have warned that one number cannot capture things like stress, medication or an odd work schedule, so treat the score as a guide rather than a medical verdict.

The other headline feature is Health Age. It sits in a new Longevity tab and turns Apple Watch data such as VO2 max (a measure of aerobic fitness), resting heart rate, sleep and heart rate variability into an age-style number. If your metrics look like those of someone younger than you, your Health Age will be lower than your real age.

The Longevity tab tracks long-term trends across seven areas, including sleep, heart health, nutrition, hearing, movement, metabolic health and mental wellbeing.

You can also feed it lab results. Apple is offering a 50-biomarker blood panel from Quest Diagnostics for $119 at roughly 2,000 US locations. Results such as A1c (a blood sugar marker) and LDL cholesterol then show up in the Health app. You can also upload recent lab work or sync medical records instead.

The Insights tab is the new home screen for your day. It gathers recent data like Activity rings, heart rate, sleep, vitals and cycle tracking, and a For You section uses Apple Intelligence to suggest changes. Apple’s own example is advice on adjusting your evening routine after several nights of broken sleep. The tab also includes videos and articles from Apple’s clinical experts.

Vitals has been redesigned with separate overnight and daytime views, and heart rate variability (HRV) now appears as a metric, with readings for both overall and recovery HRV.

There are also at-home fitness tests. Using the iPhone camera and an Apple Watch, the app can check your balance, strength, flexibility and movement, with live audio and visual feedback. Apple says the AI models run entirely on the phone and that no video is recorded, stored or shared.

Not everyone will get every feature. The redesigned app requires an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence, so older iPhones are left out. Beyond that, the requirements depend on the feature:

• Readiness needs an Apple Watch Series 12 or Ultra 4.
• Health Age needs an Apple Watch, though Apple has not published a full list of older models that qualify.
• For the at-home VO2 max check, you will need something that reads your heart rate: an Apple Watch, AirPods Pro 3, or a heart rate monitor from another brand.
• Some features are limited to people aged 18 or older.

For readers outside the US, there is good news with a catch. When Apple first showed the app in September, it said launch would be in US English only. The iOS 27.3 beta adds global English plus French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and several other languages. Apple still warns that some features will not be available in every region or language, so UK and Canadian users may not see everything at launch.

Apple says the new Health app will roll out to everyone as a free update later this year. It is part of iOS 27.3, which is in beta now and expected to be released in December.

Apple has not said why it pulled the app from iOS 27.2. It came back in the very first 27.3 beta with wider language support than Apple first promised, and developers can try it now.

One early tester who has used the Series 12 for a month praised the app as easy to read and said the Readiness and Health Age features make it worth checking daily. Their one wish was a sleep-based day, so a workout after midnight counts toward the day you started, the way some rival fitness trackers handle it.