The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday cleared the Apple Watch for a new hypertension detection tool. The health feature was one of the highlights of Apple’s September iPhone event, and it will alert Apple Watch owners to signs of high blood pressure, a dangerous condition that can lead to a heart attack or stroke and that goes undiagnosed for millions of people.
In addition to the FDA clearance for Apple’s chronic high blood pressure tool, the Cupertino, California-based company announced that it will be available on watches starting next week in 150 countries, including the United States, the European Union, Hong Kong and New Zealand.
Hypertension alerts were revealed as part of the announcements for the Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3. Many (including me) assumed it would be exclusive to the newer, higher-end models. But the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 and newer will support the new high blood pressure detector.
The features come as wearable competitors like Oura, Google, and Samsung are rolling out more features aimed at health, wellness, and preventative care. The Galaxy Watch 8, which launched earlier this summer, for example, has a skin-based antioxidant index. But Apple’s hypertension tool isn’t the only new health addition to the company’s watches. There’s also a sleep score that rates the quality of your rest on a scale of 0-100.
Both of these features will arrive next week with the WatchOS 26 update.
Watch this: New Apple Watches are raising our blood pressure with their new features
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Hypertension warnings
While it’s not the full-blown blood pressure monitoring that many Apple Watch fans are hoping for, hypertension alerts use existing sensors to address a serious health concern: a potentially fatal, silent condition that many people don’t even realize they’re living with. Apple said the feature is designed to reach more than 1 million people with undiagnosed hypertension in its first year.
Similar to Apple’s irregular heartbeat and sleep apnea notifications, the hypertension alerts run in the background and don’t require any additional action. After a 30-day analysis period, the watch will send an alert if it detects patterns consistent with high blood pressure. Apple is clear that this is not a diagnosis. The FDA has cleared the feature, but the goal is to provide an early warning that prompts a conversation with a doctor.
If an alert appears, Apple Watch will prompt you to confirm the results with a traditional blood pressure cuff. All related data can be logged in the Health app on your iPhone and exported as a PDF for your doctor. This extra step eliminates the typical “wait and track” cycle often required after a doctor’s visit, and instead allows you to walk in with actionable data in hand.
The feature will come preloaded on the new Series 11 and Ultra 3, and will be part of the WatchOS 26 update on Monday for the Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2.
Decoding the sleep score
The Apple Watch has been tracking sleep for years, measuring duration, sleep stages, and overall consistency. But it stopped short of giving you a real-world score like competitors like Samsung, Oura, and Garmin. That’s changing with Sleep Score.
Sleep Score takes your nightly data and assigns a rating from 0-100 (or “poor” to “excellent”) based on three key criteria: duration, number of interruptions (like kids or pets), and consistency before bed—which Apple says is one of the biggest contributors to quality sleep.
The timing of this rollout is no coincidence. Apple has a history of waiting until it has both the scientific basis and enough of its own data to justify launching new health features. The sleep score uses new guidance from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine , the National Sleep Foundation , and the World Sleep Society . The algorithm itself was built and validated using more than 5 million nights of sleep data from the ongoing Apple Heart and Motion Study .
Every morning, Apple Watch owners will see their score in the Sleep app on their iPhone, either as a complication on their watch face or directly in the Health app. A deeper breakdown reveals how each of the three factors contributed to your score, along with explanations for what went wrong (or right). For example, going to bed later than usual could add points to your sleep categories and lower your overall score. While it’s not exactly a prescription, the added context helps take the mystery out of what these numbers mean.
Even better, the sleep score works retroactively. If you’ve been logging your sleep for a while, your previous data will automatically update with your results when you get the new software.
Sleep tracking will be available on Apple Watch Series 6 and later, SE 2 and later, and all Ultra models, paired with an iPhone 11 or later running iOS 26.
