When the Apple Watch Series 9 was announced in 2023, Apple made a big deal about the Double Tap gesture feature, suggesting it would change the way we interact with our smartwatches.
Fast-forward to the Apple Watch Series 10 launch in 2024, and you’d have expected to hear about an update or an improvement to the feature. Unfortunately, Apple was silent during the event, and it’s not a good look for Double Tap’s future.
Double Tap?
You’d also be forgiven for forgetting what Double Tap is, as even if you own a compatible Apple Watch, there’s a chance you’ve only used it a few times — not because it’s a bad feature, just because it’s underutilized.
To recap, as the name suggests, you double-tap your thumb and forefinger to perform actions on the Apple Watch without touching the screen, such as stopping alarms, confirming a notification, or starting and stopping music playback.
Double Tap is useful, and it works really well, but unless you condition yourself to use it or regularly find yourself in a situation without a free hand to tap the watch’s screen, it can be quite easy to forget it’s there. The functionality is a little limited too, which is why I looked forward to hearing what watchOS 11 and the Apple Watch Series 10 would bring to Double Tap.
Except during the segment dedicated to the Apple Watch Series 10 in its September 9 It’s Glowtime event, Apple didn’t mention Double Tap at all. There wasn’t even a general reference to it being part of the Series 10. Seeing as Double Tap has been updated in watchOS 11 and it’s both a software and a hardware-driven feature, why didn’t Apple let us know and show off one of its most successful recent feature introductions? Was it so brief that I missed it?
What a waste
Apple didn’t make any grand commitment to support the Double Tap feature forever last year, so it is under no obligation to continue talking on it, but it was a major part of the Series 9’s sales patter, and I expect it spent a fair amount of time and money creating and marketing it in the first place. Pair all this with the fact that it works well, plus its watchOS 11 tweaks, and to ignore it during the only new product showcase 12 months later is unfortunate.
It’s not like Apple has gotten bored of gesture controls, as the new Camera Control button on the side of the iPhone 16 series also uses gestures to activate different features when you swipe and tap it. It’s also bad timing to not talk about it, due to the one thing that makes me not entirely despair about Double Tap’s future. Apple has opened up the API so developers can use it in their own apps, which will take considerable time and effort on their part. Are they going to rush to adopt Double Tap when Apple doesn’t let people know it still exists?
Mobile device gesture controls in the past have had little staying power.
I’m sure Apple has access to analytics about how we all physically interact with our Apple Watch, and can see how often Double Tap is called into action. Perhaps statistics about its use meant it simply didn’t feel the need to add it into the Series 10’s presentation, which could apply if lots of people are regularly using it, or more worryingly because they are not using it at all. It’s Catch-22, and gesture controls on mobile devices always seem to suffer from it.
Gestures get forgotten
Ambivalence toward Double Tap is what I feared would happen. There’s a risk it’ll be forgotten about, because mobile device gesture controls in the past have had little staying power. I am entirely guilty of not using Double Tap, too. I don’t often find myself in the situation where Double Tap is required, and usually only use it when I remember or out of curiosity, and not because I don’t have a choice or it constantly solves a problem for me. However, when I do use it, I remember how brilliant and simple it is, and I wish I had more opportunities to try it.
Putting Double Tap’s API in the hands of developers is giving it a really big opportunity to buck the trend of failed mobile gestures. While I don’t think it should have dedicated hours to it with the launch of the Series 10, Apple should have said something about it, and teased or even demonstrated about how it’s potentially going to improve in the future. I don’t want Double Tap to become another abandoned and forgotten gesture control system; it’s too good for that. But unless everyone — you, me, Apple, and developers — are fully invested in its success, it’s still at risk.