15 Of The Best Apple Watch Apps You Should Have Installed

With the advent of telegraphs and telephones in the nineteenth century, people got their first taste of near-instantaneous information transfer over long distances. By the middle of the twentieth century, a revolution in visual display technology was underway, facilitating innovations like televisions and early computer displays.

The development of mobile phone technologies made it possible for global connectivity using increasingly impressive handheld computers. Finally, improvements in computing technology let us make our machines even smaller until they were inobtrusive enough to attach to our bodies. Wearable technologies might still be in their adolescence, but at least one gadget has managed to take hold — the smartwatch.

The most visible smartwatch is the Apple Watch, which allows you to finally have the spy gadget you dreamed of as a kid. As a matter of fact, a new Apple Watch (and even one that's a few generations old) is way more functional than anything Dick Tracy ever had. Still, your Apple Watch is only as good as the applications it's running. Grab these ten apps to make sure you always have the functionality you need at your fingertips. Or at least, on your wrist.

Between our jobs, familial obligations, the news, and social networks the world can be pretty noisy, and you might find it difficult to think clearly. Activities like yoga and meditation — commonly collectively referred to as mindfulness — have risen in popularity in recent years and there's a growing body of scientific evidence supporting their use.

If you're looking for a way to build a little mindfulness into your day, look no further than HeadSpace. The app offers a wide variety of mindfulness activities including guided meditations, breathing exercises, and sleep noises. You can choose from specific meditations targeting particular things like generalized anxiety or daily intentions and new content is uploaded all the time.

Meanwhile, there is a deep library of content to sift through ranging from short exercises lasting only a few minutes to extended meditation sessions. You can even remotely join group sessions with people from all over the world. Activities are tracked in the iPhone's Health app so you can see your progress over time, and keeping the whole thing on your Apple Watch means you can eliminate the distractions that come with your phone.

While mobile phone components have become more efficient and smaller over the years, the size of our phones has grown steadily larger. That's almost entirely a consequence of wanting more screen space to play with while still needing our phones to fit into a pocket. Smartwatches don't have that problem because there's an upper limit to the size of the screen you can comfortably house on your wrist. Of course, this means screen real estate is at a premium on all smartwatches, and the Apple Watch is no exception.

As a result, mobile games haven't really taken off on smartwatches the way they have on smartphones. Fortunately, there are a few games that have stepped up to the challenge and pulled it off. Hit the Island is one of the best and it succeeds by leaning into simplicity to take advantage of what the Apple Watch offers.

Hit the Island is a simple ball and paddle game, similar to "Pong" or "Brick Breaker." The objective is to bounce a ball off a platform at the bottom of the screen and strike the island at the top. You control your platform not by touch but with the rotating crown on the side of the Apple Watch. Hit the Island and you score a point, but gameplay becomes increasingly complex as you move from level to level. It's not the most engaging game we've ever played, but it'll keep you entertained in line at the bank.

Fans of Douglas Adams' classic science fiction story "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" will be familiar with a certain small fish that lives inside the ear canals of interstellar castaways. The Babel fish, as it is known, feeds off the unconscious mental energy of everyone around it and in exchange it instantly translates speech in any language. The iTranslate app for the Apple Watch does more or less the same thing, but without needing to put a fish in your ear.

iTranslate offers real-time translation between 38 different languages right on your Apple Watch or iPhone. Before you start talking, set the languages you and your conversation partner are going to use. Once selected, iTranslate will automatically detect the spoken language and translate it into the receiving language. Tap and hold your Apple Watch while speaking and release the button for an audio translation.

If you're looking to make friends in a foreign place, iTranslate also offers timely greetings you can use based on the time of day. If you want to revisit a conversation later on, you can also get a transcript of the back and forth so you can brush up on the lingo or double-check what was agreed upon in your spare time. If you're the kind of person who likes to cut a new trail and meet new people, iTranslate is a can't-miss Apple Watch app.

You've probably noticed by now that many of the apps on your Apple Watch have reduced functionality and a simple interface, whereas the same app on your phone or tablet might be rich with features. There's not much that developers can do about this, considering the limited space a smartwatch offers, but Streaks doesn't suffer because of this at all.

Streaks has one purpose and it's perfectly suited for the simplicity of your Apple Watch. The idea is to set a number of tasks you want to do (or not do) each day. It could be a habit you want to build or one you want to break, as long as it's something you can track day after day. You can fit up to six counters comfortably on your watch screen, each with its own unique icon to identify what they are.

All you have to do is tap the appropriate icon when a particular objective is completed, and Streaks will keep your counts updated and right where you can see them. Sometimes all you need to keep a streak going is to see how far you'll be set back. Streaks lets you stare at those numbers right in the face.

If you're a fan of, or even if you just wish you were a fan of, European football (what Americans call soccer) then Onefootball might just be your new favorite Apple Watch app. It's your one-stop solution to everything you might possibly want to know about Europe's Premier League, Championship League, FA Cup, and more.

On Onefootball, you can watch lives matches as they're happening, streaming right inside the app, and when there aren't any games on there's still plenty to see. You can find all of the latest news about players, transfers, negotiations, standings, and scores. The built-in TV guide shows you when matches are happening and how you can watch them. If you live in some other time zone or can't catch the matches when they happen, Onefootball can still keep you up to date.

Onefootball will send you score updates and goal alerts in near real-time so you can keep an eye on the scores even when you can't actually keep an eye on them. The Apple Watch may not be the best solution for watching live football matches anyway (or any video content for that matter) but that doesn't mean you can't keep up with your favorite teams while you're on the go.

What's the point of a tiny wrist-mounted computer if you're not using it to make your life easier? Todoist is an organization app with a wide range of functions all wrapped up in one place. You can create lists, set reminders, track streaks for building new habits and breaking old ones, leave notes for yourself as you think of them and review them later, add daily tasks at specific times, and much more.

There is a free version with limited features, as well as paid monthly subscriptions with added bells and whistles. Paying a monthly fee unlocks task reminders, an AI assistant, a shared workspace with multiple people, an increased number of open projects, and more. However, if you're planning to use it for personal use, the free beginner account should be plenty for most folks. Best of all, Todoist is a cloud-based service that works on various devices, so anything you create or update from your Apple Watch will be available on your iPhone, iPad, and other gadgets.

Adding tasks is simple on your Apple Watch. Just open the Todoist app, select the Add Task option, and either type using the mini keyboard or use the microphone to dictate. You can also see upcoming tasks for today and the future as well as your ongoing projects at a glance.

Loyalty programs are a common way for businesses to attract customers to come back again and again. Pepsi famously introduced its Pepsi Stuff program in 1996, allowing consumers to use Pepsi Points to purchase exclusive gear and leading to an unlikely court battle over a Harrier jet. If you were going to drink soda, you might as well drink the brand that would give you a free t-shirt every once in a while. Today, practically every business from grocery stores to coffee shops uses some form of punch card, rewards account, or points system to attract repeat customers.

Every time you join a gym or get a membership anywhere, you're likely to be given a barcode identifier. The bottom line is that over time you end up with a wallet and keyring increasingly full of barcodes and QR codes which you rarely use but still need. That's where Reward Card Wallet – Barcodes comes in.

It's not the catchiest name for an app but it does what it says on the label. That has to count for something. This app lets you transfer all those barcodes, reward cards, loyalty cards, QR codes, and more onto a single digital wallet accessible from your Apple Watch. Customize the look of each card or code with color schemes and symbols of your choosing and clear out some room in your pockets.

Any reputable gadget succeeds by making your life easier, more fun, or both. Where your Apple Watch lands depends on the apps you install, and depending on your choices, you may be able to streamline your connectivity or add to the digital cacophony. The only question is how you use it.

With a couple of exceptions (we all need some fun in our lives) these apps are chosen to make your life easier by relocating wellness and productivity apps from your phone to your wrist. These apps understand the limited real estate and functionality of the Apple Watch and take full advantage of it.

There aren't many games because that's not what the Apple Watch is good at, but there are apps that will make you feel like a mid-century spy while you run your errands. In this list, you'll find apps for tracking and motivating fitness, reminding you of important tasks, setting and managing goals, catching sports scores, and much more.