Danny Chadwick
When Apple unveiled the Apple Watch Ultra in September, one of the device’s main selling points was taking deep into the ocean. The company touted a third-party app, Oceanic+, that would allow the rugged smartwatch to act as a dive computer for scuba divers. Today, that app is now available.
Oceanic+ enhances the dive capabilities of the Apple Watch Ultra by utilizing its ultra-bright display to guide divers to previously unreachable depths with simple commands like “go up” and “go down.” It also has some great safety features that warn a diver to slow down if they’re moving too quickly. Additionally, it displays a diver’s current depth, dive time, minutes to surface, and water temperature. The new app delivers this timely information to divers to keep them in the moment without worrying about making mental calculations to stay safe.
The app also helps divers plan their underwater excursions with information regarding dive conditions, including tides, water temperature, visibility, and currents. And once their dive is over, data such as GPS entry and exit locations, dive profile summary, depth graphs, temperature ascent rate, and no-decompression limit. All of these are presented in an easy-to-understand format that would typically take divers a very long time to calculate independently.
However, one of the most useful in-dive features of Oceanic+ is the ability to get your notifications via haptic rather than through sound. As anyone who has completed a dive knows, cutting through the echoing sounds of water is critical for any excursion.
Oceanic+ is available today for Apple Watch Ultra and requires an iPhone 8 or later running iOS 16.1. It costs $9.99 per month or $79.99 annually. And there’s a family plan available for $129 per year that can be used by up to five people.
