Report: watchOS 27 to improve heart-rate tracking; AI health coach may not debut at launch

For the better part of a year, we’ve been hearing about Project Mulberry: Apple’s AI-powered health coach. Back in February, it was reported that these efforts had been scaled back. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the features should still be on track for iOS 27, though they may not release until later in the cycle.

On the other hand, Apple is apparently going to greatly improve Apple Watch heart-rate tracking with watchOS 27, which could tie in nicely with Apple’s eventual health coach.

Improved heart-rate tracking

This weekend’s Power On newsletter is light on details for how exactly Apple Watch heart-rate tracking will be improved, but here’s what Gurman has to say:

This year’s watchOS 27 update will focus largely on stability, performance and smaller refinements, rather than introducing major new capabilities. Still, improvements to heart-rate tracking are coming. 

As someone who uses both an Apple Watch and WHOOP, I do certainly find its heart-rate tracking to be more accurate, largely because it refreshes more consistently – providing more granular insights. It’d be nice to see Apple improve in this regard, though I’d argue Apple’s biggest shortcoming isn’t its data collection – it’s the interface.

Project Mulberry delays

We first heard about Project Mulberry around this time last year, an AI agent that’d provide health insights based on your Apple Health data. Users would also be able to share their camera feed with the agent, and could be used to provide pointers while a user is working out.

This feature was initially supposed to roll out with a redesigned Health app in iOS 26.4, but was since pushed back to iOS 27 while the team scaled back its efforts. Now, it’s sounding like it may be delayed even further into the iOS 27 release cycle:

One internal project, an ambitious AI health coaching service known as Mulberry, was recently scaled back after Cue took over Apple’s health group. I don’t expect features from that endeavor to launch until later in the iOS 27 update cycle.

It’s still very possible that the redesigned Health app itself will still debut in iOS 27, but Apple’s AI health coach (and subsequent Apple Health+ subscription) are seemingly delayed until sometime later in the release cycle. It could be iOS 27.1 in October, iOS 27.4 next spring, or sometime in between.

Apple’s decision to hit pause earlier this year was largely because the company felt that its offering wasn’t quite competitive with other Health subscriptions on the market, and it wanted to take more time to get the product right.

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