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New Apple Watch Double Tap Feature: What It Does and How to Get It

Saturn007 said:
Apple's rationale for this “new” feature cracks me up!

Apple on Double Tap

“Play and pause music while carrying groceries.​
​
Answer a call while paddleboarding.​
​
Stop a timer while baking a pie.​
​
Reply to a message while walking the dog.​
​
Check your Smart Stack while holding your toddler.”​
​


The real version — Spinal Tap

“Play and pause music while carrying groceries and WALKING INTO PARKED CARS.​
​
Answer a call while CRASHING INTO OTHERS while paddleboarding.​
​
Stop a timer while baking a pie — BUT YOUR HANDS ARE FREE, SO JUST TAP YOUR WATCH!​
​
Reply to a message while LOSING your dog OR YOUR DOG EATS STRANGE THINGS BECAUSE YOU ARE DISTRACTED BY YOUR WATCH.​

Check your Smart Stack while DROPPING your toddler.”​
​
😁​
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Such are some minds here, unable to do anything but ridicule. This feature will be invaluable as somebody who must wear gloves all day for work.
 
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cookiemonster89 said:
For most of these things you need airpods or other Headphones. Then you can just use the Airpods to answer the call or stop the music. Yes it is a nice feature but nothing I would buy a new watch for.
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Nothing you would, but others yes. Those who wear gloves for work finally have an option to not have to remove gloves.

And no, the accessibility feature currently isn’t good enough for daily use.
 
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ProfessionalFan said:
It works flawlessly, I am running the beta currently.

For the people who kept saying "it has existed as an accessibility feature all along", sure kinda but this works better. It is quicker and doesn't seem to ever miss. The old feature missed and was a bit laggy at times.

Jeff Williams was right when he talked about this feature, it is game changing. I thought it'd be a gimmick but it isn't.

Carrying something in my right hand when my watch dings me with something? I don't need to fumble around to tap the screen and potentially drop what I'm holding. Just a quick tap of my fingers and it works like magic. It really is something you need to try for yourself to see.
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Yeah, people who didn’t see the use of this, or compared it to the accessibility feature which is less precise, are just naysayers who want to justify not having it.

Sorry. This is game changing like AOD was. People tried to argue that one away too.

So it goes.
 
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ProfessionalFan said:
For the people who kept saying "it has existed as an accessibility feature all along", sure kinda but this works better. It is quicker and doesn't seem to ever miss. The old feature missed and was a bit laggy at times.
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Never 'lags' for me with my S7. I use it for Siri so you can get it (him? her?) to do whatever you need (like "stop the music").
 
ProfessionalFan said:
It works flawlessly, I am running the beta currently.
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Can you check to see if you can bring up the widget stack on the Siri watch face using double tap? There's currently no way to do that, but I'm hopeful that this will be the way!

Thank you so much!
 
Didn’t work well for me at all on my Ultra 1. In my world, “works well” means 99%-100% of the time.

Incidentally, on device Siri has been so wonderful as well.
jennyp said:
Never 'lags' for me with my S7. I use it for Siri so you can get it (him? her?) to do whatever you need (like "stop the music").
Click to expand...
 
ProfessionalFan said:
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. You literally do a tap-tap for this feature.
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The term "double tap" should mean one finger doing tap-tap. The feature requires two fingers.

Phrased differently, if you said "To do this, double tap" I would take one finger and go tap-tap on the screen, and that would not be what Apple's looking for.
 
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Does anyone have any real insight to the code? Is this really new code, or just a relocation of what we had in Accessibility? I'm asking for real information on actual code, not some guy spouting off that he thinks it's better with no source that it is anything other than the same feature we had, just relocated.
 
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ProfessionalFan said:
This seems like the pedant's fallacy to me personally.
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I have software installed on my Watch right now that reacts to a double tap (and a triple tap and a quadruple tap for that matter). One finger, tap-tap, just like the double-tap on an iPhone or iPad.

Now Apple comes along and says there's this great new thing called "double tap" but it involves two fingers, not a tap-tap of one finger and not even tapping on the screen.

It doesn't take any kind of pedantry to call that wrong. It's obviously and grossly inconsistent.
 
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Likewise, if you're watching/listening to media, you can pause it and resume it (or skip).
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Curious about this take. It can only do one thing, so which is it or rather what determines if it's going to pause/resume versus skip the current song?
 
Gregory_H said:
Does anyone have any real insight to the code? Is this really new code, or just a relocation of what we had in Accessibility? I'm asking for real information on actual code, not some guy spouting off that he thinks it's better with no source that it is anything other than the same feature we had, just relocated.
Click to expand...

Did you try emailing Tim Cook?
 
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The "tap/clench" feature is NOT new! It has been an Accessibility feature for at least a year. Pinch, double pinch, clench, and double clench have been able to be mapped to various actions. Maybe Apple is just now publicizing it.
 
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Stephen13 said:
The "tap/clench" feature is NOT new! It has been an Accessibility feature for at least a year. Pinch, double pinch, clench, and double clench have been able to be mapped to various actions. Maybe Apple is just now publicizing it.
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Yep, that's exactly it. You can see that it looks and behaves exactly the same way.
 
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Stephen13 said:
The "tap/clench" feature is NOT new! It has been an Accessibility feature for at least a year. Pinch, double pinch, clench, and double clench have been able to be mapped to various actions. Maybe Apple is just now publicizing it.
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It works better now, if you tried it for yourself you'd see that
 
mannyvel said:
Unfortunately, you can't try it for yourself because that WatchOS version isn't out yet.
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It's in the beta and people are using it. So far, so good. It should be out for the rest of us in a couple of weeks.
 
It seemed like this feature was available in the previous Watch OS ... I used it with my Apple Watch 6 and it seemed to work pretty well. Unfortunately I can't find this option in Settings now that the Watch 9s have been released.
 
slothinker said:
It seemed like this feature was available in the previous Watch OS ... I used it with my Apple Watch 6 and it seemed to work pretty well. Unfortunately I can't find this option in Settings now that the Watch 9s have been released.
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A version of it was there, but didn't work as well.
 
I don’t think it’s true that running the watchOS 10.1 beta requires you to install iOS 17.1. I was able to install the beta on my watch without installing the beta on my phone, and so far I haven’t noticed anything amiss…
 
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Small clarification: I was able to install the watchOS 10.1 Beta while my phone remained on iOS 17.0 (non-Beta).
 
i just downloaded beta, and while i get gestures, all i see is cover to mute toggle. nothing for double tap. anyone else experiencing this? same in watch and phone
 
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