Apple Watch owners just got a great new feature that will make using the watch to follow workouts a lot easier, and it’s all thanks to the launch of the Apple AirPods Pro 3.
I’ll explain. The AirPods Pro 3 have a heart rate sensor on board and can be used to track workouts independently, which is done through the Fitness app on the iPhone. Once you update to iOS 26 you’ll see a new tab in that app called Workout, where you can start workouts while linked to a heart rate sensor like the AirPods 3.
This was highlighted in the Apple presentation for the new devices launching this September, including the Apple Watch Series 11 and iPhone 17, alongside the AirPods Pro 3, but it wasn’t mentioned that if you have an Apple Watch linked to your phone, you’ll also be able to view the workout builder in the Fitness app.
This means you can not only see all your past custom workouts, race routes, and pacer settings, but create new ones.
Custom workouts made easier
As a keen runner, I usually do one or two structured workouts a week, and use my watch to guide me through those workouts, which are usually based on doing time- or distance-based reps.
In the past, you had to create these workouts on the Apple Watch itself. Now the Apple Watch’s workout builder is one of the best I’ve used on a sports watch, but it’s still quite fiddly to adjust all the settings for a session on a watch when you have to set different time, distance, and pace targets for multiple steps within a workout.
It’s a lot easier to do it on a phone, which is how I do it with Garmin watches and others, and that’s exactly what you can now do in the Fitness app, building your workouts from scratch before they’re instantly synced across to your watch to follow on your wrist.
Race Routes and Pacer mode
Along with your custom workouts, you can also view other workout modes in the Workout tab of the new Fitness app, like the routes you can race and any Pacer modes you’ve set up.
I like to use the Pacer mode for races on flat routes, so being able to set this up on my phone ahead of the event will be useful, and if you like to use the Race Route feature, you can see the route and its elevation, along with your personal best and most recent times on the route before you tackle it.
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