Double Tap Gesture Now Available With WatchOS 10.1 for Series 9 and Ultra 2 Watches

Apple Newsroom:

The new double tap gesture for Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 is available today with watchOS 10.1, bringing a fast and convenient new way to interact with Apple Watch.

With the new double tap gesture, users can easily control Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 using just one hand and without touching the display. Users can tap the index finger and thumb of their watch hand together twice to quickly perform many of the most common actions. This new feature complements existing gestures like tap, swipe, raise to wake, and cover to mute that make Apple Watch simple and intuitive to use.

I’ve been testing a Series 9 watch with beta software enabling double tap for the last month or so. It’s a good feature, but it’s not nearly as useful — yet? — as I was hoping. The one thing you have to get used to is that the watch only listens for the double tap gesture when the display is fully-on. You need to tilt your wrist to look at your watch before double tapping. Usually, that’s natural — the reason you want to double tap to do something is because you see the thing you want do or dismiss. But I’ve found times where an alert or something pops up that I want to invoke double tap on, but my wrist is oblique, and double tap doesn’t register until I remember to tilt my wrist to a “looking straight at it” angle.

★ Wednesday, 25 October 2023