We recently showed you how watchOS 11’s new Vitals feature can help you predict when you’re likely to get sick. This is not a feature that Apple is touting for the Apple Watch Series 10 or other Apple Watch models that can take vitals measurements. Still, users have found that some of the vital trends Watch collects are reliable predictors of disease.
Vitals records five health parameters: heart rate, breathing rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen, and sleep time, depending on your region and whether you enable parts of it. Blood oxygen is a feature Apple can’t use in the US due to a patent dispute. Wrist temperature is a feature you should set your sleep focus on every night.
The latter turns your Apple Watch Series 10, Series 9, and Series 8 into a thermometer of sorts. However, there is a big problem with this approach. Apple isn’t ready to promote the Apple Watch as a thermometer, so you can’t use it as a thermometer when you think you have a fever.
Also, the Health app doesn’t show normal body temperature readings. Instead, Watch shows you your baseline and tells you the difference from night to night.
However, you can see the actual temperature readings that Apple Watch models with temperature sensors register. All you need is an iPhone paired with your Watch.
Before we begin, let me repeat what I said above. With Apple Watch Series 10, you can’t take your temperature whenever you want, but you can check your heart rate, take an electrocardiogram, and find out your blood oxygen levels.
I need my Apple Watch Series 10 to read automatically while I sleep.
We’ve already explained how to enable wrist temperature measurement in watchOS 11’s Vitals feature. This means you need to track your sleep and set up Sleep Focus mode for at least five nights to establish a baseline temperature, then continue using Sleep Focus. Mode to take new readings every day.
You can get temperature information by checking the Vitals app on your Apple Watch or the Vitals section of the Health and Fitness app on your iPhone. When you run it, you get something like this:
This is not suitable if you want to check measurements on a regular basis. It just shows you how your wrist temperature changes from night to night compared to your baseline. And no baseline metrics are given for that.
Here are two ways to check the actual temperature readings. The first relies on the iPhone’s Health app to collect all your health data.
- Open the Health app on your iPhone
- Tap. Browse Bottom bar options
- Tap. body measurements menu
- tap wrist temperature
- Scroll down until you see Show all data
- Tap on any item in the list to see the measurements
It turns out that the Apple Watch Series 10 is recording actual temperatures. Check the wrist and surface temperature and then calculate the value.
There’s an even better way to do the same thing. Third-party apps like Gentler Streak may show graphs of that data in menus like Wellbeing. This is typical of Gentler Streak, which I use to track health data.
As shown below, these apps display actual graphs featuring temperatures extracted from healthcare apps.
Can you trust those readings?Again, the Apple Watch is still not a thermometer. You can check your body temperature at any time during the night to see if it matches what your watch shows.
This value may be different from the temperature measured elsewhere on the body, but I trust the trend line. Observing consistent changes in wrist temperature trends may help predict upcoming colds and flu and prepare accordingly.
