Today's was very targeted, basically for the new AirTags. watchOS 26.3 should drop in the very near future, maybe two weeks? We'll see about that one. (But I'm not holding my breath.)
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watchOS 26 — Dismissing a message does not mark it "read"
- Thread starter PotentPeas
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Agreed. There were unspecified "bug fixes" supposedly also included in this update. I'm not expecting Apple to ever fix it at this point, but I'll always be checking now after every update.
Sad. Once I get it installed I’ll file another feedback. It’s taking forever. Because Wi-Fi connectivity seems to be broken with watchOS 26.2.1.
Doing this one more time. I'm installing the watchOS 26.4 RC to check the status of this issue. ...It requires installing the iOS 26.4 RC first, so, it'll take a little bit of time to get everything settled.
This I think is the last chance for Apple to address this. For the past few years, the mid-year X.4 RCs tend to carry more changes than the others. And after this time, they move pretty much to "maintenance mode" for the OS as attention shifts to the next one ahead of WWDC. So, if they haven't fixed this in 26.4, I am not hopeful for a fix before watchOS 27 (if it even happens then). And I'm not riding the watchOS 27 beta train (nor probably even updating to it right at launch), so someone else will have to check!
This I think is the last chance for Apple to address this. For the past few years, the mid-year X.4 RCs tend to carry more changes than the others. And after this time, they move pretty much to "maintenance mode" for the OS as attention shifts to the next one ahead of WWDC. So, if they haven't fixed this in 26.4, I am not hopeful for a fix before watchOS 27 (if it even happens then). And I'm not riding the watchOS 27 beta train (nor probably even updating to it right at launch), so someone else will have to check!
Fingers crossed.
I continue to submit feedback, knowing that it almost certainly gets ignored because Apple chose to make this unintuitive UX change that nobody asked for, and there's no acknowledgement or sign that they intend to do what their customers want despite numerous threads online here and elsewhere want it reverted.
I have a feeling that at this point, our next best chance that they'll reconsider and implement a reversal of this will be with watchOS 27.0.
No go. Same behavior on 26.4; "pull down to dismiss" doesn't mark a message as read.
I'm really used to scrolling down to hit the "Dismiss" button at this point. :-\
I'm really used to scrolling down to hit the "Dismiss" button at this point. :-\
I've lurked on this page for some time hoping to see this change back. But as I've thought about it, this parallels a change that happened to the iPhone some years back (I would not even be sure what iOS we're talking about). It used to be you could swipe a text message off your Lock Screen and it would mark it as read. They took that away and made you deep press for the preview to get the same behaviour.
Mostly Apple wants us to work harder to read texts...
Mostly Apple wants us to work harder to read texts...
I thought about that change a few years ago. It also annoyed me to no end, but long-pressing to mark read isn't as onerous as losing the swipe gesture on Apple Watch. Especially since most messages were coming to my Apple Watch first.
Now that they've ruined convenience for some unknown reason that nobody asked for, I'm more adamant about trying to do whatever limited efforts I can to make Apple fix it. I raise a feedback item with every watchOS release now outlining the issue, pointing out that it is an unexpected and undesired behavior, and was previously working correctly prior to watchOS 26.