To all the Apple users out there, if you think tracking your workouts and sleep are all the health features your devices have to offer, think again.
While being able to monitor your heart rate or figure out whether you’ve got sleep apnoea is already pretty fancy, Apple devices also provide a bunch of other cutting-edge health features designed to enhance your wellbeing in ways you may not even aware of.
Let’s delve deep into these lesser-known features, and uncover a whole new world of wellness possibilities right at your fingertips – literally!
1. Monitoring Environmental Noise Exposure
Noise pollution is more than just an annoyance – it has the proven ability to compromise our physical wellbeing, aka make us hard of hearing before we’ve even reached an age old enough to experience a midlife crisis.
But if you own an Apple Watch, then it’s time to take advantage of it for the sake of your ears.

Just get the Noise app set up on the Apple Watch, and you’ll receive notifications whenever your environment becomes too noisy for your health. But how does it do this?
In addition to being able to take note of our biometrics (and, of course, tell time), this neat little device is actually capable of measuring our surrounding sound levels through its microphone. If it deems that the mean sound level has hit the danger zone – which is normally 80 decibels and up – for more than three minutes, then it’ll let us know.
If you’re getting a little concerned about the privacy aspect of this, don’t worry. The watch doesn’t record anything, it’s just making an assessment. And it’ll be especially useful for you if you’re constantly working in loud environments, or if your hobby happens to be attending eardrum-rupturing concerts.
2. Dynamic Noise Cancellation
At the same time that noise pollution can affect our physical health, it can also influence our mental wellbeing by increasing our cortisol levels, impacting our sleep, and heightening our cognitive fatigue.
In this sense, white noise can be a real life-saver; it helps block out aural distractions created by occurrences like construction work and heavy traffic, thus restoring our focus, as well as our sanity.
The problem is that it can block out everything.
Audio cues help us protect our personal safety, such as by signalling us to keep our eyes peeled if we’re crossing a road but hear an unseen car coming from around the corner, or telling us to get out of the way if someone screams, “Watch out!”
However, when we cancel out these acoustics from our environment, we also put ourselves at greater risk of danger.

And perhaps this is part of the reason why the AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4 have an Adaptive Audio mode.
This mode melds Active Noise Cancellation, which serves as white noise by erasing unwanted sounds, and Transparency, which lets you hear everything around you, such that the noise you register changes depending on the aural environment.
Essentially, the AirPods use built-in sensors to analyse ambient noise levels, and optimise the audio output accordingly to deliver the best listening experience for you.
While this is performed automatically, you can also switch up the settings if you want to let in less or more noise.
Either way, this Adaptive Audio feature enables you to listen only to what you want to hear, while ensuring you can still keep an ear out for anything.
3. Screen Proximity Alerts
Let’s face it: too much screen time is bad for our eyes. What’s even worse? When our face is literally all up in that screen.
This is where an iPhone feature called Screen Distance comes in.
With this feature turned on, your phone can use the TrueDepth camera to tell whether it’s being held within 30 centimetres of your face for too long – and it’s not subtle about letting you know.

(Image credits: Apple Support)
It gives an alert that covers your whole screen, preventing you from using it further until you’ve shifted your face away to an acceptable distance.
The aim is to cultivate healthier viewing habits in younger users and lower their risk of developing myopia.
For adults, it’s a much-needed reminder to give ourselves a break from the eyestrain, and maybe stare out a window for once. If you pick the right window, the view can be just as enticing as what you see on your phone.
4. Mood Tracking
In support of our overall wellbeing, Apple products don’t just track aspects of our physical health – we can also use it to track our mood.
And exactly why is understanding something as trifling as the daily patterns of our emotions important?
According to Dr Michelle Craske, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles: “Identifying our feelings has been shown to help us manage difficult emotions, appreciate positive moments, and improve wellbeing.”
The mood log is available on the Health app (iPhones and iPads) and the Mindfullness app (Apple Watch), and encourages us to reflect a little more on our mental state. There are a variety of benefits to reap from emotional identification, including better emotional regulation, reduced feelings of distress, and even a lowered heart rate.
Even if you’re not the journaling type of person, keeping note of how you feel every day is still a valid practice – and it’s never too late to start.
Explore the Health Features In Your Smart Devices
Health metrics have come a long way from being able to just count our steps, and these hidden gems prove it. How many of these features are new to you? Which one will you be trying out first?