Apple just announced its “2025 Pride Collection,” which includes a new Sport Band for Apple Watch, a dynamic watch face, and a dynamic wallpaper that will be available for iOS and iPadOS. The watch band is available to order from today and the watch face/wallpapers will drop in upcoming software updates.
Apple has been releasing special edition watch bands for Pride Month for almost a decade now, each with a different take on the rainbow/multicolored design. This year’s is pretty straightforward, making use of bold stripes of color just like actual pride flags.
The watch face has a shifting animation that circles through the different colors in a diagonal direction. Apple says the stripes shift to form numerals when a wearer lifts their arm to look at the watch — but if those numerals are showing on the little animation posted on the blog then, awkwardly, I can’t see them.
The iPhone and iPad versions of the background shift whenever you move, lock, or unlock your device. We’ll get access to the wallpapers and watch face with watchOS 11.5, iOS 18.5, and iPadOS 18.5. There’s no macOS version of the wallpaper but that isn’t too surprising since previous years haven’t included one either.
The Sport Band is made out of silicon, with each color mixed separately and then compression-molded together. It’s probably the best material choice for such a brightly colored design because it’s so easy to keep clean and it doesn’t really wear down. There’s nothing worse than buying something for the color and seeing it get dirtied and faded within a year.
And this probably is the brightest design Apple has released in the past few years — 2024’s Braided Solo Loop had quite a lot of dark colors involved, while 2023’s Sport Band was more understated with a white background. The two Pride Sport Loop editions from 2022 were almost pastel-colored compared to this year’s design.
If you like the look of it, you can order the watch band now for $49, and remember to look out for the wallpapers when the new updates drop.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.