{"id":51190,"date":"2026-03-06T16:12:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T21:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=51190"},"modified":"2026-03-20T09:23:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T13:23:48","slug":"apple-watch-fitness-regressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/06\/apple-watch-fitness-regressions\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Watch Fitness Regressions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/shapeof.com\/archives\/2026\/2\/marco_on_apple_watch_fitness.html\">Gus Mueller<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@ccgus\/116144919759528843\">Mastodon<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/shapeof.com\/archives\/2026\/2\/marco_on_apple_watch_fitness.html\">\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/atp.fm\/680\">episode 680 of ATP<\/a>, at about 6:12 in, Marco Arment goes off on watchOS 26&rsquo;s fitness app and trashes all the changes. And I couldn&rsquo;t agree more with him.<\/p>\n<p>I thought it was just me who hated all the changes, and the slow animations, and the workout picker. It&rsquo;s such a regression I don&rsquo;t even know where to start.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>If I could downgrade my watch safely, I would.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/26\/watchos-26-removed-offline-workout-voice-alerts\/\">watchOS 26 Removed Offline Workout Voice Alerts<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"apple-watch-fitness-regressions-update-2026-03-18\">Update (<a href=\"#apple-watch-fitness-regressions-update-2026-03-18\">2026-03-18<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@kavehv\/116184632922798969\">Kaveh<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@kavehv\/116184632922798969\">\n<p>They are <em>so<\/em> bad, I have no idea how any competent UX designer could have okayed this, and I&rsquo;m not a competent UX designer by trade.<\/p>\n<p>It used to be trivial to start your working deterministically with a tap or two, now you have to stop your workout entirely to start the bleeping watch workout.  I really want to understand how this got approved and shipped at a company that [used to] pride itself on UI\/UX design.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/social.seattle.wa.us\/@garland\/116184695304681429\">garland<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/social.seattle.wa.us\/@garland\/116184695304681429\">\n<p>I guess I&rsquo;m not the only one bothered by the changes to the watch workout app. Sometimes when you change the UI just for the sake of changing stuff, you make it worse.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/duck.haus\/@joesteel\/116194996396448074\">Joe Rosensteel<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/duck.haus\/@joesteel\/116194996396448074\">\n<p>Do you think a major feature of watchOS 27 will be that pushing the &ldquo;play&rdquo; button on a Workout actually starts the workout, or do you think Apple is going to hold that back for watchOS 28?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"apple-watch-fitness-regressions-update-2026-03-20\">Update (<a href=\"#apple-watch-fitness-regressions-update-2026-03-20\">2026-03-20<\/a>): See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/atp.fm\/683\">Accidental Tech Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gus Mueller (Mastodon): In episode 680 of ATP, at about 6:12 in, Marco Arment goes off on watchOS 26&rsquo;s fitness app and trashes all the changes. And I couldn&rsquo;t agree more with him. I thought it was just me who hated all the changes, and the slow animations, and the workout picker. It&rsquo;s such a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-03-06T21:12:55Z","apple_news_api_id":"07fa51cc-1e2d-430a-b6a4-7e48be0979ca","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-03-20T13:23:21Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AB_pRzB4tQwq2pH5Ivgl5yg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[77,1311,1212,2599,2220],"class_list":["post-51190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-design","tag-fitness","tag-watchos","tag-watchos-26","tag-workout"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51190"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51318,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51190\/revisions\/51318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}