Apple Watch quietly unlocks powerful health feature in more countries

Apple's health-focused features are now expanding with the rollout of sleep apnea detection on Apple Watch to Australian users. 

A new watchOS update is bringing the feature to users in Australia. Sleep apnea detection is a data-driven respiratory monitoring feature, and is available for the Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and the Apple Watch Ultra 2. 


Apple's "Sleep Apnea Notifications" feature relies on the timepiece's accelerometer and tracks subtle wrist movements, which it tags as Breathing Disturbances. It gauges interruptions in breathing patterns. 



Every night, these readouts are collected and combined, and then they are visible in the Health app on your iPhone. Elevated breathing disturbances are flagged over a 30-day check period. 

Apple says that the feature uses machine learning models trained with nearly 4,000 nights of clinical-grade sleep data, which was collected from over 2,100 participants. Meanwhile, a validation study confirmed that the people that the sleep apnea algorithm identified all had at least mild sleep apnea. 



Basically, you will receive a notification if your Apple Watch detects consistent signs of moderate or severe sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a common condition in which your breathing may stop and restart many times during your sleep. This can cause you not to get enough oxygen. 

The notification you may get from your Apple Watch will give you information about the period when it happened. Of course, as with any health-related Apple Watch (or other Watches too) feature at the moment, it is not to be used for a diagnostic tool, and always, when you have doubts about your health, you should seek medical advice.