Featured Image Credit: Reddit / Alex Segre/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Topics: Apple, Health, Reddit, Social Media, Viral
Joshua Nair
Topics: Apple, Health, Reddit, Social Media, Viral
Apple Watch owners can't believe one of its new app's functions, following the latest watchOS 11 update.
The Apple Watch has polarised opinions among the public ever since the release of series one back in 2015, and it has continued up to the tech firm's latest model, the series 10, which came out just last month.
However, it looks like a new app, available on Apple Watch series eight and later, has caught the attention of social media users.
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The Vitals app was added to the Apple Watch's repertoire with the OS update earlier this month, but several people were unaware of what it really did.
A lot of users assumed it was like the heart rate app, cool for about five minutes before you got bored of looking at your BPM for a few minutes.
But Vitals not only shows your key health metrics, but it gives you a 'deeper understanding of your daily health status'.
Some of the factors monitored are your 'heart rate, respiratory rate, blood oxygen, wrist temperature, and sleep duration from the previous night', according to the App Store.
That means that it keeps monitoring these figures if you keep it on in your sleep, leading to one Reddit user making a huge realisation.
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It turns out that the app can tell you when you're starting to get sick - something that could come in handy for a lot of people, especially this time of year.
One Reddit user shared: "Woke up today feeling a off. Now as the evening is setting in, I am feeling that old familiar feeling in my head. I’m sick," while posting the above screenshot from the Vitals app.
It revealed that there were three 'outliers' in his wrist temperature, as the metrics fell out of its usual range, signalling that something was up.
Users were shocked when they shared the news, as one commented: "I didn’t even realize the Apple Watch measures wrist temperature until seeing this post…"
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A different user said that they had the same experience: "Mine too, I’m still sick but watch noticed before I did."
A third user shared: "I started using Vitals when it first came out on the beta and since then I’ve gotten sick about twice. Both times it knew a couple days in advance and I hadn’t felt anything wrong.
"Kinda insane how useful this feature can be."
Despite its usefulness in detecting illness from time to time, it shouldn't be used as the be all and end all to treat medical conditions.
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The feature to measure blood oxygen is currently banned in the US after a claim arguing Apple violated health tech company Masimo's pulse oximetry patents.