I bought an Apple Watch Series 9 four weeks ago, and I was expecting double tap will brings a lot of convenience to me. But sadly in reality, double tap has lot of limitation and the UX is a mess.
- Double tap to play/pause or skip songs are only available in Apple Music app and Now Playing. However, Apple does not make API for double tap publicly, the double tap function is completely useless in YouTube Music and Spotify. The only workaround is switch to Now Playing.
- If any notification has only “Dismiss” button, the double tap is useful. However, if the notification, such as WhatsApp or Telegram notification, contains “Reply” button and it is located in the first place, it directly directs you to reply. I was attempting to have continuous double tap twice, but it won’t work.
- It’s hard to trigger double tap very often even you wear your watch tightly and tap your fingers firmly.
- Lack of the ability to customise the double tap. You only have two usage: playback and smart stack.
The double tap sounds like a last min attempt by Apple to add a new feature by just slightly modifying the accessibility feature.
Yes/No.
Accuracy: Please use this as a moment to empathize with old people that can’t distinguish between short press and long press or can’t double tap at the right speed. In my experience, the gesture is incredibly accurate, but you have to learn the pace of tapping. Not too fast not too slow. This is something we do all the time everywhere else, but have internalized and lost consciousness of. (The double tap also needs your watch to be awake which has leads to separate class of failures — will be amazing if they ever get a system that can skip that need.)
Utility: Hardly anyone thinks its current form is very useful. (It’s a little useful. I think of it as “hugging support”. If I wake up in the morning and have one arm around someone and want to turn off an alarm it’s great. Or if I have an arm around a friend and want to take a photo: also great. …Music would be useful even without hugs if I weren’t casting from watch too.)
The hope, I think/for me, is that this is gesture conversion 1. The watch needs multiple gestures to navigate meaningfully. Like with the accessibility version. Hopefully they bit by it add reliable, snappy versions of the accessibility gestures. Having multiple will be more than the sum of parts!
I only use double tap when I answer/hang up a call and I don’t like the fact that the watch face has to be “on” for the tap to work.
And I’ve also noticed that double tap doesn’t work when your sleep schedule is active.
I love double tap, but it would use some work, and I expect it to get better.
Another half baked Apple.