Improvements to the Double Tap API and Smart Stack will make watchOS 11 better for one-handed operation
Improvements to the Smart Stack and opening up the Double Tap API will change the way you interact with your Apple Watches.
#applewatch #watchos11 #smartstack #doubletap
By Kenny Yeo -
Photo: Apple
On the surface, watchOS 11 seems like a rather minor update. There’s the new Vitals app to give you an idea of your overall well-being, and there’s a new feature called Training Load for athletes. But there are also improvements that address a crucial part of the Apple Watch and that’s one-handed operation.
This is an aspect of the Apple Watch experience that is often overlooked. While you can quite easily operate your iPhone with one hand, doing the same with your Apple Watch is considerably trickier.
In watchOS 11, developers will finally be getting access to the Double Tap gesture, which was introduced last year with the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2.
By tapping your index and thumb together twice in quick succession, Double Tap can perform commonly used actions in your watch, like bringing up the Smart Stack or pausing your music or video. It can also be used to scroll through the app.
Photo: Apple
By opening this gesture up to developers via the new Double Tap API, it can enable new ways of interacting with your Apple Watch and your most used apps one-handed.
Lori Hylan-Cho, senior engineering manager for watchOS, said she is thrilled to see how the automatic scrolling action of Double Tap would benefit apps like Messages and Weather that use scroll views extensively.
Eric Charles, senior manager of watchOS product marketing, added that he was excited to see how developers might rethink how their apps would look and feel. Because developers need to specify a primary action for the Double Tap gesture, he urged developers to think hard about how they feel their users might want to interact with the app, say, if they were holding a cup of coffee in their hands.
But Double Tap isn’t a panacea to one-handed operation. After all, being just one gesture, it has its limitations. Furthermore, it only works with the newest Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches.
This is where the Smart Stack comes in. Introduced in watchOS 10, Smart Stack is, as its name suggests, a stack of widgets that you can invoke either by swiping up from the bottom of your display or by using the Double Tap gesture.
Improvements to the way the Smart Stack works mean the most relevant widget should be served to you when you need it most. Photo: Apple
watchOS 11 improves on the Smart Stack by using machine learning and cues such as time, date, location, daily routines (like waking up and bedtime), and even environmental cues to show the widgets that you might need at that point in time.
For example, Eric said that the new Shazam widget might appear at the top of the Smart Stack if the Apple Watch hears music playing in the background. And if you are in a foreign land, the first widget you might see is the new Translate app, which offers translation directly on device. In other words, Smart Stack should serve up the app you need when you need it.
Another improvement to the Smart Stack is Live Activities. When a Live Activity appears on your iPhone, the same widget will appear at the top of your Apple Watch’s Smart Stack, making it easy for users to keep track of events that are most relevant to them – like calling an Uber or tracking a flight.
Consider the number of times you want to use your Apple Watch but can’t because you were either carrying something in your other hand or occupied with some activity. The cleverer Smart Stack and the opening up of the Double Tap gesture – with some help from Siri – could go some ways in making these situations and interactions a little less awkward.
If you can’t wait to try out these new features, the public beta of watchOS 11 was released last week.
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