The Apple Watch Ultra is easily the most robust and most impressive smartwatch that we’ve seen from Apple. There are plenty of other competing products in this space, especially when you look around at the options from Garmin, Casio, and others. But what separates the Watch Ultra from the competition is watchOS and having access to the Apple App Store, giving you the ability to download some of the best third-party apps available today.
Today, we’re taking a look at a few of the best health and fitness apps that you might want to try it out if you just picked up the Apple Watch Ultra. There will be a few apps that you likely recognize, along with a few others that you might not have heard of before.
Komoot: Route Planner & GPS
Turn your next ride, hike, or run into an adventure with komoot. Get inspired by tapping into shared community knowledge and recommendations, then bring your adventures to life with the easy route planner. Get the route perfect for your sport — be it smooth asphalt for your road bike, single tracks for your mountain bike, silent cycling paths for touring or natural trails for your hikes. Plan down to the last detail with at-your-fingertips info like surface, difficulty, distance and elevation profile.
Truth be told, there are a lot of running and walking apps on the App Store. But Strava continues to be one of the best options out there, as you’ll be able to track so much more than just a run or walk. With Strava, you can track more than eight different workout types. Then, you are able to export the data into the Health app so you can keep track of things like your heart rate and other biometrics from the workout. But the best part is that you don’t need an Apple Watch to take full advantage of Strava, as you can also use other fitness trackers and smartwatches.
Whether you hike, bike, run, or walk, AllTrails is your companion and guide to the outdoors. Find detailed reviews and inspiration from a community of trail-goers like you. We’ll help you plan, live, and share your outdoor adventures.
AllTrails offers more than a running app or fitness activity tracker. It’s built on the idea that the outside isn’t a place to seek, but rather a part of us all. Custom route planning helps you search for dog-friendly, kid-friendly, stroller-friendly, or wheelchair-friendly trails, and more.
Although the Apple Workout app offers everything you need for most workouts, you can take your running a step further with Nike Run Club. This app uses a bold, prominent design to show your distance, heart rate, and pace while you’re on a run. Then displays a minimalist map of your route when you finish up.
It’s easy to view all your recent runs in the app as well as starting a new run; you can even set a distance, duration, or speed goal for a new run. If you need more help with motivation, Nike Run Club offers distance challenges, lots of community support, and even coaching plans. From the Apple Watch, you can also start an audio-guided run to keep pushing you every step of the way.
The Outdooractive App for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch is the perfect companion for hiking, cycling and other outdoor activities. With the app you can find and plan routes around the world with ease. Browse through countless route suggestions for hiking, cycling and ski touring. All routes come with full details, elevation profiles, photos & directions.
You can easily plan and create routes based on your preferences, add text and photos to these, publish them within the Community or share them privately with friends. You can also import and export GPX files as required. Challenges are a fun way to motivate yourself to be more active. Earn achievement badges, win prizes, and reach your goals by using the app to record your activities.
Use your iPhone as a step counter. Pedometer++ lets you easily keep track of your daily and weekly step counts, without any impact on your battery life. You can view your progress each day from either the iPhone app, Today View widget or Apple Watch app. Pedometer++ integrates with the Health app in order to collect and display data collected by your Apple Watch. It can display your step count, walking distance, active calories and heart rate data.
Transform your Apple Watch Ultra into a personal dive computer for the ultimate underwater experience. Get the Oceanic+ app — the fully capable snorkeling and recreational diving computer providing all the technologies expected from today’s most advanced dive computers. Set your gas mix, maximum depth planned, algorithm conservatism level, total dive time, surface intervals and more pre-dive settings.
Oceanic+ runs a Bühlmann decompression algorithm that constantly calculates and monitors dive parameters, so all critical information is just a glance away. See your dive profile in an overlaid graph with depth information, temperature, ascent rates, and no-deco time. Each dive log features the ability to add dive visibility, surface conditions, and currents.
It should come as little surprise, but there are a couple of built-in Apple Watch Ultra apps that are great for everyone. The Compass app has been available on the Apple Watch for years, but Siren and Depth are two apps that made their respective debuts alongside the Apple Watch Ultra.
Siren is technically more of a feature, as it must be enabled first within your Apple Watch Ultra settings. But when enabled, your Apple Watch Ultra will play a “continuous siren that repeats at regular intervals and that can be heard up to 600 feet away.” It’s designed to be a safety feature that could prove extremely helpful if you are lost and need to be indicated. According to Apple, the siren will continue sounding until you either turn it off or your Watch Ultra runs out of battery.
While the Oceanic+ Dive Computer App is pretty darn impressive, it’s not for everyone. You might not want, or need, to turn your Apple Watch Ultra into a diving computer, but want to know just how deep you’re going if you find yourself going on a trip.
According to Apple, the Watch Ultra is capable of withstanding depths of up to 130 feet (or 40 meters). With the Depth app in-tow, your Watch Ultra is capable of showing you the following bits of information:
Current time
Current depth
The session’s maximum depth while you’ve been underwater
Water temperature
Apple is quick to point out, however, that the Watch Ultra “isn’t a dive computer and doesn’t provide decompression stop information, gas analysis, or other recreational scuba diving functionality.” With this in mind, Apple recommends continuing to use a secondary depth gauge and timer or watch when performing these activities.
Andrew is a freelance writer based on the East Coast of the US.
He has written for a variety of sites over the years, including iMore, Android Central, Phandroid, and a few others. Now, he spends his days working for an HVAC company, while moonlighting as a freelance writer at night.
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