Apple Watch Will Now Remind You to Breathe

Forgot how to breathe? There’s an Apple Watch app for that.

Jay Blahnik, Apple’s director of fitness and health technologies, announced a new Apple Watch app called “Breathe” today at the Worldwide Developers Conference. Breathe turns the Apple Watch into a breathing coach by measuring your speed and number of breaths per minute.

“There’s a lot more to health than just fitness,” Blahnik said on stage. He’s right. Breathing is probably the most important part of fitness because without breathing there would be no fitness.

The Breathe app will allow users to set notifications to remind them when to breathe. All an Apple Watch user has to do is set how long they want to breathe for with the watch crown, and then let the watch guide you through mankind’s most basic instinct.

An expanding, turquoise blue circle moves with the user’s breath. But if you don’t want to have to look at a tiny watch screen while you breathe, the watch can guide you through haptic feedback. Every time you need to take a breath, the watch will send a little vibrate.

There are a variety of uses, one of which is helping you calm down from the stress Apple helps create.

In all fairness, concentrated breathing has its health benefits. A Harvard Family Health Guide suggests using deep breathing to lower stress through breath focus. And even though the Apple Watch didn’t match the hype it first received, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in May that health care could be the Watch’s “holy grail.”

“One day, this is my prediction, we will look back and we will wonder: How can I ever have gone without the Watch?” Cook said at the Startup Fest Europe. “Because the holy grail of the Watch is being able to monitor more and more of what’s going on in the body.”

Eliminating the need for breathing coaches makes the Watch one step closer to an all-in-one health tool. Breathe will be available on the free Watch OS3 upgrade this fall.