WatchOS 9

watchOS 9 is the ninth major release of watchOS for the Apple Watch series that is in development at Apple Inc.

Product history
watchOS 9 is derived from iOS 16; both were announced on June 6 at the 2022 Worldwide Developers Conference and are scheduled to be released sometime later in 2022.

New features
VP of Technology Kevin Lynch and staff introduced the following new features at WWDC 2022:
 * Metrics — updated to improve user workouts.
 * Sleep — records user sleep activity.
 * Heart — updated with the ability to record (AFib) history of users.
 * Medications — help users manage medications and supplements.

Some new accessibility features that Apple previewed as part of on May 17, 2022 include:
 * Apple Watch mirroring for users to control their watchOS device remotely from an iPhone.
 * New Quick Actions to expand AssistiveTouch gestures in watchOS.
 * Siri Pause Time to allow more time for users with speech disabilities to issue a voice command.

Supported devices
watchOS 9 is expected to run on the new Apple Watch Series 8, but has dropped support for the Apple Watch Series 3. An iPhone 8 or later running at least iOS 16 is also required to support the following models:
 * Apple Watch Series 4
 * Apple Watch Series 5
 * Apple Watch SE (1st generation)
 * Apple Watch Series 6
 * Apple Watch Series 7
 * Apple Watch Series 8 (new model)
 * Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) (new model)
 * Apple Watch Ultra (new model)
 * Support ended for Apple Watch Series 3.