watchOS 7 is the seventh release of watchOS, shipped September 16, 2020. Sleep tracking finally arrived first-party — schedules, wind-down, and morning summaries — alongside the pandemic's signature feature: automatic handwashing detection, twenty-second countdown included. Family Setup let a parent's iPhone manage cellular watches for kids and older relatives without phones of their own, and watch faces became shareable, curated, and richer with multiple complications per app.

Sleep tracking; handwashing detection; Family Setup (cellular models); face sharing and the Chronograph Pro/GMT faces; dance and cooldown workout types; hearing-health headphone notifications; and on-watch translation dictation. The Force Touch hardware gesture retired platform-wide.

Sleep and Family Setup pushed the watch into all-day-and-night, all-ages service — the always-worn health device Apple's marketing had promised — while handwashing detection became the era's museum piece: the OS feature that timestamped 2020.