Apple Watch blood oxygen monitoring is finally back for U.S. users. After months of legal drama left the feature disabled on the Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2, Apple is rolling out a software update today that restores it.
The update, included in iOS 18.6.1 and watchOS 11.6.1, moves the heavy lifting from the watch to your iPhone.
Sensor data from the Blood Oxygen app is sent to the phone for calculations, and the results appear in the Respiratory section of the Health app.
It’s a workaround, yes, but one that actually works and brings the functionality back where it belongs.
U.S. Apple Watch owners were in a weird limbo. The feature disappeared after a long-running patent dispute with Masimo, a health tech company, triggered an import ban in December 2023.
Apple had to disable blood oxygen on new models sold stateside. Meanwhile, users overseas never lost access. It was frustrating, to put it mildly, if you rely on these readings for health or fitness tracking.
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Apple paused sales, launched new watches without the feature, and carried on. Now, the company has found a way to restore a core health feature without waiting for the legal battle to wrap up.
Blood oxygen monitoring can once again give you real-time insight into your respiratory health, trends over time, and early warnings that could actually matter.
If you’ve been staring at a greyed-out Blood Oxygen app for months, open your iPhone, install the updates, and check it out.
Was Apple right to bypass the legal roadblock? Tell us if you think this workaround is clever engineering or just a patchy solution.
