Finally, Readiness score comes to Apple Watch — Apple explains how it works and why now was the ‘right time’ to launch it

How is it different from other wearables' readiness scores?

Features By Michael Sawh Published 17 September 2026

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When Apple officially unveiled the Apple Watch Series 12 and the Ultra 4, it claimed that its latest generation of smartwatches offered the most accurate heart rate sensing on a wearable, thanks to its redesigned Health Sensing System. Accuracy improvements aside, the new system’s advances have made it possible for Apple to introduce new Watch features like its Readiness score.

This metric looks at a myriad of watch data to determine whether you’re in optimal shape to tackle a physically or mentally demanding day. That’s accompanied by a simple prompt to put that score into context. However, this isn’t a new development for other wearable owners: if you use an Oura Ring, a Garmin watch, a Whoop or even a Google Fitbit Air, receiving a readiness score of some description won’t be new to you. So why did Apple feel now was the time to join the Readiness party?

“It’s down to the evolution and the advancements we've made in the hardware technology, which has really brought about this to be the right time,” says Craig Bolton, Director of Fitness Technologies.

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“We've built many health and fitness features, and quite a few of them are related to Readiness. The Health Sensing System unlocks the ability for continuous heart rate variability and all-day heart rate measurements and that's really important and critical when we think about trying to bring a really accurate and concise and simple feature to users.”

How Readiness scores work

Readiness scores can be viewed from the dedicated Readiness Watch app, Watch complication and the redesigned Health app. It looks at your sleep score, vitals data including temperature and blood oxygen, as well as your most recent workout data and training load.

Apple confirmed to us that workout data can be taken from third party apps as well as Apple’s own apps. To start seeing scores, you need to record seven night’s worth of sleep data to establish a baseline.

Unlike Oura, Google and Garmin, Apple has opted to score users Readiness on a scale of 1-10 as opposed to 1-100. Apple has its reasons for choosing a different scoring scale and it underpins how it thinks about delivering new fitness features.

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