Apple Watch’s Double Tap Feature Now Available Through watchOS 10.1

Apple Watch’s Double Tap Feature Now Available Through watchOS 10.1

During the keynote last month, Apple has showcased the Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2’s new capabilities: double tap with a pinching gesture to initiate an action, such as answering or ending calls. The feature is now officially making its way into these two models through the latest watchOS 10.1 update.

It’s not just that – Apple has said that there’s quite a few actions you can do with this gesture, depending on which app you’re using. These include:

• Opening the Smart Stack from any watch face and scrolling through widgets in the stack.
• Answering and ending phone calls.
• Viewing a message from a notification, scrolling through longer notifications with an additional double tap, replying using dictation, and sending a message.
• Pausing, resuming, and ending a timer.
• Stopping and resuming a stopwatch.
• Snoozing an alarm.
• Playing and pausing music, podcasts, and audiobooks.
• Switching to the new Elevation view in the Compass app.
• Taking an iPhone photo with the Camera Remote in the Camera app.
• Starting or stopping automatic Workout reminders.
• Performing the primary action from notifications, such as replying to an incoming message from a messaging app and snoozing reminders — including from third parties.

How does this feature work then? Apple says the new S9 SiP (System in Package) comes with the new 4-core neural engine that enables the chip to recognize the tiny movements and changes in the blood flow in the wrist to recognize the gesture being performed. The company noted that such feature has “minimal impact” on both devices’ battery life (18 hours for Series 9, 36 hours for Ultra 2).

In certain apps, you can customize the behavior of double tap through the connected iPhone device – though that is limited to Smart Stack and music playback for now. In this case, Smart Stack allows you to either advance to the next widget or select the highlighted widget; whereas in music playback that options becomes either play/pause or skip to a new track instead.

The watchOS 10.1 is now available for Apple Watch Series 4 and newer models (iPhone Xs and newer with iOS 17 required).

Pokdepinion: If there’s SDK for this I think there’s great potential for this feature.