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KennyJr

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 13, 2020
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After talking to four different support folks at Apple, the last fellow I spoke with finally said "Ah here's why your double tap doesn't work .. The double tap feature won't be available until an update coming in October. Right now the WatchOS is 10.0.1 .. Double tap will be available with WatchOS 10.1.
 
My Apple Watch 9 arrived at about 1pm. Double tap didn't work. I spent quite a long time on the phone with Apple support (4 different support folks). Hopefully they're now all aware that that feature won't be available until October with WatchOS 10.1 and that going into accessibility doesn't yield the solution. I follow these news sites and I hadn't seen mention of this. But Howard2K - you sure told me.
 
My Apple Watch 9 arrived at about 1pm. Double tap didn't work. I spent quite a long time on the phone with Apple support (4 different support folks). Hopefully they're now all aware that that feature won't be available until October with WatchOS 10.1 and that going into accessibility doesn't yield the solution. I follow these news sites and I hadn't seen mention of this. But Howard2K - you sure told me.
Sounds like you were talking with well-meaning people who were not as up to date with Apple ongoings as we are.
 
My Apple Watch 9 arrived at about 1pm. Double tap didn't work. I spent quite a long time on the phone with Apple support (4 different support folks). Hopefully they're now all aware that that feature won't be available until October with WatchOS 10.1 and that going into accessibility doesn't yield the solution. I follow these news sites and I hadn't seen mention of this. But Howard2K - you sure told me.

Lots of moving parts, can't keep up with everything :D
 
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Thanks for the reminder. I knew it wasn’t available at launch but was recently exposed to excessive scotch and Tatar-Tots and must have forgotten.
 
I enabled it in accessibility
Yes, that's what the support folks were suggesting. I wanted the double-tap capability so I could briefly stop then restart the timer while cooking. The accessibility double-tap doesn't work for that. Actually, in contrast to the accessibility double-tap approach, the Apple Watch 9 double-tap directly controls the apps you're using.
 
Yes, that's what the support folks were suggesting. I wanted the double-tap capability so I could briefly stop then restart the timer while cooking. The accessibility double-tap doesn't work for that. Actually, in contrast to the accessibility double-tap approach, the Apple Watch 9 double-tap directly controls the apps you're using.


It’s almost like it’s actually not the same thing :D
 
Yes, that's what the support folks were suggesting. I wanted the double-tap capability so I could briefly stop then restart the timer while cooking. The accessibility double-tap doesn't work for that. Actually, in contrast to the accessibility double-tap approach, the Apple Watch 9 double-tap directly controls the apps you're using.
I can do that with accessibility. With the countdown timer open, clench fist twice puts you in accessibility mode and tapping fingers once chooses interface elements. Tap until you choose the pause button, then a clench pauses. Another clench starts it back. The feature will probably work better than that once it’s out, but you can at least have this timer stop while you wait :)
 
I did not know this wouldn’t be available at launch. One of the first things I did was try to operate the podcasts play button.

Apple’s Watch documentation for interacting w watchOS 10 doesn't mention it. They should at least include it as an interaction method but call out its pending availability.
 
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I did not know this wouldn’t be available at launch. One of the first things I did was try to operate the podcasts play button.

Apple’s Watch documentation for interacting w watchOS 10 doesn't mention it. They should at least include it as an interaction method but call out its pending availability.
I don’t have any podcasts loaded (will load later), but I haven’t yet found a button I can’t activate using the accessibility feature. Tap seems to be “next selection” double tap is “last selection” and fist clench is “tap this one”.
 
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It was announced as “Coming in October” during the Keynote; Jeff said it in his closing remarks on the Double Tap portion. And it’s been listed as Coming in October on Apple’s own site since the Keynote.

Frustration is fine, but expectations are your own.

See approx. 15:48 mark

 
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There’s also BEEN this on Apple’s own site:
 

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My Apple Watch 9 arrived at about 1pm. Double tap didn't work. I spent quite a long time on the phone with Apple support (4 different support folks). Hopefully they're now all aware that that feature won't be available until October with WatchOS 10.1 and that going into accessibility doesn't yield the solution. I follow these news sites and I hadn't seen mention of this. But Howard2K - you sure told me.
Support people don’t get advance training for product security reasons. Which means they often don’t realize when some random feature that somebody HAS to use, isn’t out yet. Some features of the OS they learn in advance e but something like double tap, which was just announced at the event - yeah, I can see that getting by them.
 
Support people don’t get advance training for product security reasons. Which means they often don’t realize when some random feature that somebody HAS to use, isn’t out yet. Some features of the OS they learn in advance e but something like double tap, which was just announced at the event - yeah, I can see that getting by them.
No complaints against the support staff - They were great and worked hard to try to solve my problem. And no, now that I've learned from here the reality of the situation, there was no reason to have expected them to know about the delayed software for the double tap.
 
After talking to four different support folks at Apple, the last fellow I spoke with finally said "Ah here's why your double tap doesn't work .. The double tap feature won't be available until an update coming in October. Right now the WatchOS is 10.0.1 .. Double tap will be available with WatchOS 10.1.

Hahaha, same thing happened to me. I was wondering why in the hell double tap isn‘t working on my Apple Watch Ultra 2. I even booked an appointment with the genius bar, until I found out using Google that this feature will be released in October.

I seriously spend a 1 hour double tapping with my fingers in public like a crazy person. Surprised I wasn‘t brought in for a psychological evaluation.

Maybe I wasn‘t the only person who tried to get his double tapping to work in public that day.
 
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Maybe I wasn‘t the only person who tried to get his double tapping to work in public that day.
I did, but I was in an Apple store, so I looked up how to enable the accessibility feature of it. :) But, there’s no instructions on what it does so I didn’t even try using it until I saw this thread to see if I could make sense of it. It’s actually fairly well implemented for being able to get around on the watch with just the watch arm, but it doesn’t enable what’s shown in the videos… depending on where the cursor is, it could take a few actions to turn off an alarm, for example.

And, I can see how, for Apple, having the watch be accessible would be the thing they’d want to nail down first, then the rest of us get to play with the non-accessibility part of this in next week’s beta :)
 
There’s been several instances recently where I was carrying something in one hand when a notification came through. I didn’t raise my wrist immediately, but once I had a moment, just raised my wrist, double fist clench, tap, fist clench to review the notifications.

Can’t wait for the full feature to be available. :) Even without anything in my hand, it’s just how I check my notifications now.
 
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