Apple seeds third public beta of watchOS 7 to public beta testers

Apple first announced watchOS 7 back at the end of June at this year’s all-online Worldwide Developers Conference, and now the company is moving ahead with beta seeds of the software in preparation for a public launch later this year.

Apple on Thursday seeded the third public beta of watchOS 7 to public beta testers. This is a major software update for the mobile operating system, bringing with it a variety of new features.

If you are already part of the public beta program, you can download and install the new prerelease software right now as long as you have your devices properly registered. If you are not part of the public beta program but want to be, you can sign up with this link.

To update, the Apple Watch must have at least 50% battery life. It must also be connected to its charger, and connected and within range of the iPhone.

watchOS 7 brings with it plenty of new features. The new software includes the ability to not only download new watch faces in general, but also quickly share them to show them off to other Apple Watch owners. watchOS 7 also includes a new hand washing detection feature (which will track you washing your hands for at least 20 seconds), which, according to Apple, is the result of “years of work“.

The new smartwatch operating system also includes sleep tracking features, which is described as such:

Through the detection of micro-movements from the watch’s accelerometer, which signals respiration during sleep, Apple Watch intelligently captures when the wearer is sleeping and how much sleep they get each night. In the morning, the wearer will see a visualization of their previous night’s sleep, including periods of wake and sleep. They will also see a chart showing their weekly sleep trend.

There are also new audio notifications, new workouts that can be tracked with the smartwatch, and more.

Here are the system requirements for watchOS 7:

If you are part of the public beta program, you can now download and install the latest beta.