Is an Apple Watch Text "Default Reply" Supposed to Dismiss Once Tapped?

[jennyp]

If I receive a text message on my Apple Watch (S7), there are a few hard-coded "default replies" that I can choose from, such as "Yes", "Hang on...", "Can I call you later?", "Thank you", and so-on.

If, in a hurry, I choose to reply by tapping on one of these, the list of choices doesn't go away, leaving me thinking that I didn't tap properly, or that something didn't work, often prompting me to tap again, sometimes hitting a different default choice.

This happened recently while I was in a rush and the recipient ended up with several separate message replies — all caused by me tapping again, thinking it hadn't worked before.

Is this a bug? Or are the "default replies" supposed to stay on the watch screen, the idea being that you have to press the crown to escape out of it?

My Apple Watch is running watchOS version 26.0 (23R352). My iPhone is running iOS version 26.0 (23A341).

 

[stvl]

Happens for me too, I have the iPhone 17 Pro Max and a Series 11 watch. But I can't answer regarding if that is how it's supposed to behave, because this is my first time using an Apple Watch. Was it not like this before WatchOS 26 and iOS 26? I am assuming it keeps the suggestions up for in case the message thread continues and you wanna use another quick reply.

 

[macphoto861]

I use the “quick reply” feature for Messages often. Previously, if a message came in, I could scroll to the desired quick reply, tap it, and the screen would be “dismissed”. Now, with Watch OS 26, if I tap a quick reply, the list of quick replies remains (in other words, it gives the appearance of me not having tapped a quick reply).

This caused me some embarrassment initially, as I sent a duplicate “thanks!” reply to a client several times, since it looked like the tap was not registering. Now I know to just tap the desired reply, and then tap dismiss, but then I have to take an extra step of going back into the message to visually confirm that it was indeed sent.

Anyone else experiencing this?

(Edit: I made this as a separate post, and it was combined into this thread)

 

[!!!]

Happens for me too, I have the iPhone 17 Pro Max and a Series 11 watch. But I can't answer regarding if that is how it's supposed to behave, because this is my first time using an Apple Watch. Was it not like this before WatchOS 26 and iOS 26? I am assuming it keeps the suggestions up for in case the message thread continues and you wanna use another quick reply.

No it's not supposed to be like that, and it never was in the previous "25" watchOS versions.

Just another incident of Apple making the experience worse. Who knows if it's a bug or intentional at this point.

 

[macphoto861]

I’ve also noticed that the watch is sluggish when a message comes in… it takes a moment for the list of responses to populate. That has led me on a few occasions to inadvertently tap on a response when I just meant to tap dismiss.

 

[Klschmann]

No, this is not the way this has worked previously and I too found myself replying multiple times thinking it wasn't working.

The way it used to work, and the way I hope they fix it to now, is that once you clicked on one of your saved responses, the box would go away and you'd see the reply that you clicked on. Now that jump back to the messages doesn't occur for some reason. I hope this was a simple oversight and that this returns because I use the saved responses a lot and it is very clunky in 26.