Apple's new watches borrow one of Fitbit and Oura's smartest health features

Fitness trackers have happily told us how much we moved, how poorly we slept, and how fast our hearts beat, then largely left us to connect the dots. But Whoop and Oura changed that by turning a pile of biometric data into one digestible answer: Should you push hard today or take it easy? At its big iPhone launch event, Apple finally brought that idea to the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 with a new feature called Readiness.

Readiness combines recent activity and vitals, including sleep duration, blood oxygen, HRV, respiratory rate, and resting heart rate, into a score from zero to ten. Apple then translates that number into one of four refreshingly direct recommendations: Recover, Pace Yourself, Ready, or Go For It. The idea is to help you decide whether today calls for a demanding workout, a lighter session, or perhaps no heroics at all.

This is not just a morning verdict frozen in place. Apple says Readiness updates throughout the day as new information arrives. A punishing pre-lunch workout or an unexpected shift in your daytime vitals could therefore change the score. You can also see which factors moved it and dig into each one for more context.

The feature appears in Apple’s redesigned Health app under the new Insights tab, which continuously summarizes heart, sleep, readiness, fitness, vitals, and cycle-tracking data. Apple says it developed the scoring algorithm using data from the Apple Heart and Movement Study, alongside exercise scientists and physicians.

The concept will feel immediately familiar to Whoop and Oura users. Whoop’s Recovery score and Oura’s Readiness score both use personal baselines and signals such as HRV, resting heart rate, sleep, and recent strain or activity.

Google and Samsung already offer their own takes on the idea. Google’s Readiness score uses sleep, HRV, and resting heart rate to produce a 0–100 recovery rating each morning. Samsung’s Energy Score considers the previous day’s activity, sleep quality, resting heart rate, and resting HRV, and then provides personalized guidance for managing activity and rest.

Apple draws from a similarly broad mix of activity, sleep, and vitals, but stands apart by recalculating Readiness throughout the day as workouts and new health data come in.

There may be an unwelcome catch for existing Apple Watch owners. Apple has not said whether Readiness will reach the Series 11, Ultra 3, or older models, and its Watch comparison page lists the Readiness app only for the Series 12 and Ultra 4.

That could be a hardware limitation. Apple explicitly ties Readiness and other new features to the new Health Sensing System, whose upgraded optical and electrical sensors measure heart rate every five seconds and HRV as often as every five minutes. Until Apple confirms the requirements, though, we can’t rule out support for older models just yet.