Apple has announced that 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.
The double tap gesture is helpful in common situations when the user’s other hand is occupied, such as when walking the dog, cooking, or holding a cup of coffee. Double tap allows users to select the primary action in a wide variety of watchOS apps and notifications, including:
- 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.
The double tap gesture available on Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 is powered by the S9 SiP, which is 25 percent more power efficient than the previous generation, and the new 4-core Neural Engine, which can perform machine learning tasks twice as fast.
