Apple Brings Blood Oxygen Sensor Back to the Apple Watch

At the end of 2023 Apple made an announcement that it will be halting sales of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2. The reason for this was due to a patent ruling by the International Trade Commission that indicated that Apple violated the patents of Masimo.

The result of this was that the Blood Oxygen sensor would not be available for any Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Ultra 2 sold in the United States after December 24th, 2023. At the time, only these two items were affected, but it would include any future watches released in the United States, including the Apple Watch Series 10.

Even though the injunction was in place, it did not prevent Apple from including the Blood Oxygen hardware, which Apple continued to do.

Blood Oxygen App Returns

Yesterday, Apple announced that the Blood Oxygen sensor feature would return to the Apple Watch, with a slight change. From the Apple Newsroom post:

Following this update, sensor data from the Blood Oxygen app on Apple Watch will be measured and calculated on the paired iPhone, and results can be viewed in the Respiratory section of the Health app. This update was enabled by a recent U.S. Customs ruling.

On affected models, the new Blood Oxygen app will allow you to start a session, the data will be sent to the iPhone and then processed. The results will be shown in the Health app, under the "Respiratory" section. Affected Apple Watches will be able to take measurements in the background as well. This is particularly needed for tracking Blood Oxygen while sleeping.

In order to r-enable the Blood Oxygen app on the Apple Watch you will need to update your iPhone to iOS 18.6.1, and the Apple Watch to watchOS 11.6.1.

If you have an Apple Watch purchased before the ban, or if you purchased your Apple Watch outside of the United States, the Blood Oxygen app will continue to work as it always has, directly on the Apple Watch.

iOS 26 and watchOS 26

If you are currently on the betas for iOS 26 and/or watchOS 26, you will not have this feature, at least as of this writing. I would suspect this would be added in the next iOS 26 and watchOS 26 betas, but it is possible that it will not be available until the actual release of the 26 operating systems.

Below is the last reading I had, from September 20th, 2024 with my Apple Watch Series 9.

My Thoughts

I find it interesting that the way around the ban is to do the processing on the iPhone. I am not sure if this process can be patentable, but if it can, I would not be surprised if Apple does patent the process.

The other thought that came to mind is that this now inexplicably ties the Apple Watch to a paired iPhone. Furthermore, this also means that there is less of a chance for Apple to allow the Apple Watch to be set up on its own, at least in the United States, because it would mean that there is no way for the Blood Oxygen sensor to work.

It is good to see the Blood Oxygen sensor become usable again in the United States for the Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 models, but it would be better if they could work the same across all devices, but this is better than not having it.

Source: Apple Newsroom