Why can’t I manually take blood oxygen level measurements?

Question

Why can’t I manually take blood oxygen level measurements?

I read the recent (US-based) announcement that blood oxygen levels could once again be measured using my Apple Watch series 9 if I updated my watch to WatchOS 11.6.1 and my iPhone 15 Pro to iOS 18.6.1. I did that a while ago and I was able to go into the Watch app’s privacy settings on my phone to enable “Blood Oxygen Recordings” to take background recordings which appears to work fine.

However, every tutorial I can find saying how to manually take a measurement instead of taking a background measurement says that I need to go into the Watch app on my iPhone and then enable the Blood Oxygen app on my Watch, but it’s been weeks since I updated my iPhone and watch and I still do not see the Blood Oxygen app listed. This means I cannot use this functionality on my watch when I want to and thus have to wait for a seemingly random-timed background recording.

Did I miss a step? Did I misunderstand what was recently re-enabled by the iOS/WatchOS update?

Apple Watch Series 9, watchOS 11

Posted on Aug 29, 2025 9:17 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

BenjiFujiCrisp Author

Level 1

23 points

Aug 31, 2025 2:00 PM in response to LD150

I didn’t know there was a non-native ECG app, but more importantly I didn’t realize there was an App Store app on my watch.

Looks like I had deleted the native Blood Oxygen app from my watch, likely because it did nothing for over a year.

Thank you for telling me to look there!

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Answer 2

Aug 30, 2025 6:46 AM in response to LD150

I have taken an ECG before using my Apple watch, but I also just took another. I’m not sure if you’re saying that is supposed to unlock the blood oxygen monitoring or not but it didn’t seem to.

I did read somewhere that the workaround for the patent infringement was to make the blood oxygen readings viewable only on the iPhone and not on the watch, but how do I go about initiating a measurement? That’s what I can’t figure out

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Answer 3

Aug 30, 2025 3:09 PM in response to BenjiFujiCrisp

If this is helpful troubleshooting information, in the Watch app when I search “blood oxygen” it seems to show me a button for the general settings related to that functionality (as seen in the screenshot here), but tapping on that search result doesn’t do anything.

[Edited by Moderator]

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Answer 4

Aug 30, 2025 8:51 AM in response to BobHarris

Okay, well I’ve just taken an ECG and rebooted both my phone and watch after and I still do not see that app listed in the watch app or on my watch. Is there anything else I can do?

Edit:

Oh, and my iPhone is on iOS 18.6.2

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