We’re pleased to announce the release of Hebcal for Apple Watch 2, available immediately at the Apple App Store. It’s been five years since the initial release of the Hebcal Hebrew Calendar for Apple Watch, and we’re back with an important update required to support watchOS 27.
The primary goal of the Apple Watch app is to provide Hebrew date, holidays and Torah portion on the watch face in the form of “complications”. If you used our first version, the complications you already set up should carry over:
- “Hebcal” (rectangular, inline): Hebrew date + Torah portion and/or holiday
- Hebrew Date (circular, corner, inline): today’s date in the Hebrew calendar
- Torah Portion (circular, inline): this week’s parsha, or today’s holiday
We have added a few new features, too:
Sunset and candle-lighting times. Hebrew days begin at sundown, and the app has always rolled over to the next Hebrew date at 8:00pm on the device local timezone. Turn on Use Location in Settings and it rolls over at sunset instead. Friday and holiday candle-lighting times, Havdalah, and Chanukah candles then appear in the app and on the watch face. Tap a day with candle times to see the details on a Zmanim card. You can adjust the candle-lighting minutes and the Havdalah setting. The default follows local custom, such as 40 minutes before sunset in Jerusalem. Your location stays on the watch and is used only for these calculations.
The Omer. During the Omer, tap the day to open the new Omer card. It shows the evening the count is said, the count itself, the Sefirah, the word and letter of Psalm 67, and the Ana BeKoach words, with Hebrew set in the SBL Hebrew typeface.
A calendar you can browse. The list used to show the next 60 days. It now shows the next two weeks day by day, followed by Shabbatot and holidays for a full year, grouped by month. Each month shows its Hebrew months and the emoji for its events. Tap a month to see its days.
You’ll also notice some minor improvements on the complications themselves. The corner Hebrew-date complication now shows the day number in the center with the month curving along the bezel. The Torah Portion circular picks the best layout for each week: two lines for long names, a single large word for holidays, and tuned hyphenation for names like Ha’azinu. On a holiday such as Yom Kippur it shows the holiday, not the next Shabbat’s reading. The rectangular complication shows the Torah icon next to the parsha, and the inline ones fall back to shorter text when space is tight.
As always: no frills, no gimmicks, no notifications, just an easy way to glance at the date and parsha. Sephardic, Ashkenazi and Hebrew, the Israel schedule and Daf Yomi are all still in Settings.
Other minor improvements
- Requires watchOS 10.6 or later (1.16.4 supported watchOS 7)
- Chanukah is shown with emoji on the complications, and the day of Chanukah is a plain number instead of a keycap emoji
- The Hebrew Date complication text is now white, and the Hebrew parsha complication drops the vowel points so it’s easier to read at small sizes
- The Israel schedule now turns on automatically when you install in an Israel time zone, or when your first location fix is in Israel. Your own choice is never overridden.
- Complications refresh right away when you change the language, Israel or Daf Yomi settings, and when you travel across time zones
- Long holiday names now shrink to fit on one line instead of wrapping
- The Hebcal inline complication no longer shows the year
- Month names are abbreviated when they don’t fit
- Spelling fixes, including Ha’azinu capitalization and Tazria/Sazria
- Updated holiday and parsha data, including Purim Meshulash
If you install Hebcal for your Apple Watch and then delete it, it may be difficult to reinstall. This problem occurs because the Hebcal watch app does not have a companion iPhone app. See our article Reinstalling Hebcal for Apple Watch for step-by-step instructions.
We welcome your feedback and other questions! Please post a comment to the Hebcal Community Support page.
