A few days ago, a sketchy leak suggested Apple was planning two major changes in watchOS 12: Apple Intelligence features and a visionOS-like inspired design. Additionally, the report suggested a few new changes for the Apple Watch Ultra 3, which seemed untrue. Now, in his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman actually corroborated some parts of this report. The top insider believes watchOS 12 will focus on two major features: Apple Intelligence and Solarium, the internal name for the new design language coming to iOS 19, iPadOS 19, and macOS 16.
Still, the major changes in watchOS 12 won’t be crazy overhauls. In fact, Gurman writes: “The watch doesn’t currently have Apple Intelligence, and that isn’t exactly changing with the upcoming watchOS 12 software. But the company is branding a new set of features as ‘powered by Apple Intelligence’ (even though the device isn’t actually running the AI models directly).”
With that, Apple will only tweak how it promotes Apple Intelligence features with the Apple Watch. After all, watchOS 11 already has AI-powered features, such as Notification Summary and Genmoji support. It’s unclear which other functions the company could be planning to bring to the Apple Watch indirectly.
Gurman also says that the Apple Watch is “designated to get some of the new interface elements here and there, but without a major overhaul.” That makes sense since the Apple Watch already has a visionOS-like design. These tweaks will likely be minimal, reflecting changes in icons and so on.
That said, Gurman’s report corroborates what The Verifier said last week. Still, after a light watchOS 11 update, watchOS 12 isn’t expected to reinvent watchOS as version 10 did.
We’ll keep reporting on the latest watchOS 12 features and leaks as we learn more about them. Below, you can learn more about iOS 19.
