The Apple Watch's Double Tap Gesture Points At a New Way To Use Wearables (theverge.com) 44
Apple has introduced a completely new way to interact with the Apple Watch without ever needing to use the touchscreen. It's called Double Tap and it arrives today via the watchOS 10.1 update. The Verge reports: With a quick pinching motion, you can use it to scroll through the new smart stack of widgets in watchOS 10, pause or end timers, skip music tracks, and answer phone calls. It's the sort of feature that you might read about and scoff at -- until you're unloading groceries from your car, hands full, and an important call comes through on your watch. [...] Double tap technically isn't a new gesture so much. In 2021, Apple introduced Assistive Touch, an accessibility feature designed for people with limb differences or mobility issues. The idea was to give these folks a way to navigate through menus and control the Apple Watch without needing a second hand.
On the surface, it can seem like double tap is a rebadged version of Assistive Touch. That's led to understandable confusion as to how the two features differ -- and why double tap isn't available on older Apple Watches that support Assistive Touch (Series 4 or later, including the first-gen SE and Ultra). The short answer is that the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 have a more powerful chip. Specifically, the new S9 features four neural engines for machine learning, which is what powers double tap. On older watches, Assistive Touch was run on the main CPU.
But practically speaking, it's easier to see how Assistive Touch and double tap differ once you try using both. [...] Double tap isn't designed to help you navigate anything. The best way I can describe it is Assistive Touch is like the mouse to your computer. It scrolls, it selects, and it's highly programmable. Double tap is more like the double-click portion of using a mouse. You use it solely to perform the main action of an app. And to do that, Apple had to spend a lot of time researching what people wanted or expected a single double tap to do. [...] And, when double tap performs as intended, it does feel a bit like the watch can read my mind. It's genuinely cool to see double tap work with not just my index finger but the rest of them as well. To my surprise, it feels less gimmicky than I expected. But despite Apple's efforts, it doesn't take long to run into double tap's limitations...
On the surface, it can seem like double tap is a rebadged version of Assistive Touch. That's led to understandable confusion as to how the two features differ -- and why double tap isn't available on older Apple Watches that support Assistive Touch (Series 4 or later, including the first-gen SE and Ultra). The short answer is that the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 have a more powerful chip. Specifically, the new S9 features four neural engines for machine learning, which is what powers double tap. On older watches, Assistive Touch was run on the main CPU.
But practically speaking, it's easier to see how Assistive Touch and double tap differ once you try using both. [...] Double tap isn't designed to help you navigate anything. The best way I can describe it is Assistive Touch is like the mouse to your computer. It scrolls, it selects, and it's highly programmable. Double tap is more like the double-click portion of using a mouse. You use it solely to perform the main action of an app. And to do that, Apple had to spend a lot of time researching what people wanted or expected a single double tap to do. [...] And, when double tap performs as intended, it does feel a bit like the watch can read my mind. It's genuinely cool to see double tap work with not just my index finger but the rest of them as well. To my surprise, it feels less gimmicky than I expected. But despite Apple's efforts, it doesn't take long to run into double tap's limitations...
Great summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great summary (Score:4, Insightful)
And if it doesn't "use the touchscreen", what is it that you tap?
Re:Great summary (Score:5, Informative)
You double tap your thumb on your index finger. The newer watches can detect that gesture without you touching the watch. (I guess through movements of the bones in your wrist maybe?)
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And the big advantage is ... that there are no fingerprints on the watch?
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No, the big advantage is that you don't have to use your other hand (or your nose, which is what I do sometimes).
I occasionally use my nose to tap the screen of my phone.
Yeah, this is the same type of in-the-air "click" hand-gesture as the Vision Pro uses.
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... and then I read TFA. You double tap your thumb with a finger on the same hand.
The example use case given (hands full with shopping) is stupid. You can't do this movement if your hands are full. So if you're wanting to answer a call you still have to free up a hand to do so.
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The example use case given (hands full with shopping) is stupid. You can't do this movement if your hands are full.
Anyone can, easily. When holding a bag (gripping the bag handles to be precise) on each hand, you can still easily open up just your thumb and index finger to pinch together, while still gripping your bags with the remaining 3 fingers.
Not sure how well the watch can detect that, but that is no different from doing the gesture while gripping the other 3 fingers into a fist, and the muscle movement of the first 2 fingers are the same, so probably won't cause any difficulty for the watch.
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Yep. Sometimes tapping the thing you're holding with one finger will work too. It just needs two quick movements with roughly the right timing.
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You need to buy an Apple watch to find out /s
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I really love that the summary in no way describes what the double tap gesture actually consists of, except quickly mentioning something about pinching.
Literally the first sentence in quote already told you:
"With a quick pinching motion"
That's the gesture, you pinch your thumb and first finger together, twice. Double "tapping" your thumb with your index finger if that is more clear.
Re:Great summary (Score:4, Informative)
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It doesn't say what to pinch. Pinching is also a touchscreen gesture.
The first sentence in the summary already told you "without ever needing to use the touchscreen". How many ways can you pinch without using the touchscreen?
No amount of description can explain to people who don't want to understand.
Re: Great summary (Score:2)
I just woke up like 6 min ago and was having a hard time trying to get what the dumb ass verge was talking about. How many ways can they avoid just saying "tap your fingers together"?
No it's hinted at by not using the touch screen and pinching motions on a feature called double tap.
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This is technology. We don't tell you how to use something because it's so obvious.
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Unless the extract above has been taken out of context, The Verge article is fucking daft not to have told us what the "pinching" meant. I would not describe tapping thumb and forefinger together as "pinching" anyway, I would describe it as
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Literally the first sentence in quote already told you:
"With a quick pinching motion"
Just tried doing that. The girl next to me was not impressed and punched me in the face. Do not go around pinching people, I don't know what Apple was thinking with this. Or maybe they didn't explain it properly.
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I really love that the summary in no way describes what the double tap gesture actually consists of, except quickly mentioning something about pinching.
Literally the first sentence in quote already told you:
"With a quick pinching motion"
That's the gesture, you pinch your thumb and first finger together, twice. Double "tapping" your thumb with your index finger if that is more clear.
"Pinching" in everyday English use is 99.999% transitive.
Absolutely no native English speaker would walk up to you with no prior context and say, "pinch".
If someone did, absolutely every native English speaker would ask, "Pinch what?"
So it should be expected for people's brains to hear "pinching" and search the sentence/context for the object being pinched. And since the context here is a touchscreen device, it should be expected for people's brains to presume the "pinching motion" refers to the touchscreen
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I really love that the summary in no way describes what the double tap gesture actually consists of, except quickly mentioning something about pinching.
Literally the first sentence in quote already told you:
"With a quick pinching motion"
That's the gesture, you pinch your thumb and first finger together, twice. Double "tapping" your thumb with your index finger if that is more clear.
Although the Detection Method is different with the Watch, It's the same "Tap"/"Double-Tap" hand-gesture that the Vision Pro uses. Like this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
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> the summary in no way describes what the double tap gesture actually consists of
Let me help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This could be actually a game changer for women. (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about set up gesture the watch knows, that it translates as panic switch.
The watch has the phone call 911 send you GPS coordinates and turns on the mike but nothing else.
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See story about boy and wolf as to why this stops being so effective by year 2.
Instructions not clear. (Score:3)
It's not new (Score:2)
Any Watch from I believe 4 and up supports essentially the same feature. Go to Settings - Accessibility - Quick Actions and turn it on. I recommend also setting display type to Minimal.
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The article forgot to mention that you only touch your fingers together, you dont touch the watch at all, it just feels the vibrations and then makes a predetermined action
Hand gestures are the worst (Score:4, Insightful)
First thing I disable on any device.
Nothing innovative. Typical Apple. (Score:2, Informative)
Double tap -- has worked for over 10 years on fitbit devices.
Double tap - has worked for a hundred years on using a pistol to quiet the bad terrorist dogs.
Apple is "pioneering" the double-tap? Sure, maybe they can wake my fitbit or kill Hamastan Terrorists.
Pretending this is a "new" software thing... that's just Apple making up shit.
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This isn't a double tap on the screen - if you wear your watch on your left wrist, for instance, the watch is detecting a gesture being made with your left hand.
The naming is terrible. It's not really a tap at all.
Uhu? (Score:1)
I thought "double tap" meant something sexual ...
You mean with the watch? Ewww....
Who needs it? (Score:2)
When I don't have a free hand to interact with my Apple Watch, I just use my nose.
Relax, People. (Score:2)
Put your phone on silent.
Bring in your groceries.
Put them away.
Update your inventory.
Have a beer.
Check your notifications if you feel like it.
Call them back if you feel like it.
"OMG what do I do if I get a notification while I'm carrying groceries?!?!?!?" is *insanity*.
Apple, stop this - you're making simple people crazy.
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Put your phone on silent.
...
Check your notifications if you feel like it.
Call them back if you feel like it.
This. A hundred times this.
OK its a watch not a phone (Score:2)
Big deal (Score:1)
This isn't new, though (Score:2)
Can someone explain to me why this is suddenly being pushed by Apple as some hot new feature?
I've been using this capability on an Apple Watch for at least three years. It's an accessibility called "Assistive Touch Hand Gestures" and it can be configured to respond differently to single and double taps, as well as single and double clenches of the fist.
Not new (Score:2)
The exact same gesture could be activated as an accessibility feature for quite some time even on older models.