Apple switched on sleep apnea notifications for Apple Watch users in mainland China on 14 October, after China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) granted the software a medical device registration certificate, Apple’s China Newsroom announced.
The feature looks for signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea. The watch’s accelerometer picks up small wrist movements linked to interruptions in normal breathing and turns them into a metric Apple calls breathing disturbances. Each night is marked as elevated or not elevated in the Health app on iPhone and iPad, where the data can be viewed over one month, six months or a year.
Rather than judging a single night, Apple analyses the data every 30 days. If it points to persistent signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea, the user gets a notification with the likely time frame, guidance on why treatment matters and a PDF covering three months of breathing disturbance data to take to a doctor. Apple says the algorithm was built with deep learning on clinical-grade sleep apnea test data and validated in a clinical study.
Which Apple Watch models and countries
In China, as elsewhere, the feature works on Apple Watch Series 9 and later, Apple Watch Ultra 2 and later, and Apple Watch SE 3 and later. It is intended for people aged 18 or over who have not been diagnosed with sleep apnea. With mainland China added, Apple says sleep apnea notifications are available in more than 170 countries and regions, listed on its watchOS feature availability page.