Apple’s innovative new high blood pressure alerts will not be exclusive to the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Apple Watch Series 11. The feature is coming to several older models, giving millions of Apple Watch owners access to potentially lifesaving hypertension alerts.
Apple Watch Series 9, Ultra 2 and later models to get hypertension alerts
Hypertension alerts will be available on Apple Watch Series 9 and later, plus Apple Watch Ultra 2 and later models, running watchOS 26, according to an Apple press release.
High blood pressure — or hypertension — is a leading cause of heart attack and stroke that affects about 1.3 billion people annually. Hypertension is known as the “silent killer” because it’s asymptomatic and often undetected until it’s too late. But hypertension is highly manageable with lifestyle changes.
The new hypertension feature will alert users when their Apple Watch detects signs of high blood pressure using the optical heart sensor and machine learning algorithms.
The sensor analyzes how blood vessels respond to heartbeats over a 30-day period. If it detects signs of chronic high blood pressure, the Apple Watch owner will receive an alert. They’ll be urged to take their blood pressure with a cuff over a seven-day period and notify their doctor — per American Heart Association guidance.
One million alerts
Photo: Apple
Apple hopes the feature will notify more than 1 million people with undiagnosed hypertension within the first year. The company expects Food and Drug Administration clearance soon. Apple says the feature will become available in more than 150 countries and regions this month.
Apple said it developed the new feature based on health studies involving more than 100,000 participants. Then it validated the hypertension alerts in clinical trials with more than 2,000 participants.
If you own an older Apple Watch, you can expect to get the new feature with the release of watchOS 26, which Apple plans to release on September 15. The new Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Apple Watch Series 11 will begin shipping September 19.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
