[software] This is how the 'double pinch' of the Apple Watch works

[ぁ Ꭷbito-]

This new feature controls applications with a simple gesture of your fingers in the air, opening up multiple possibilities for using your devices.

The internet is filling up with videos of users of the new Apple Watch Series 9 pinching the air with their fingers to control the newly released smartwatch without putting a single finger on its screen: for those who don't know or haven't seen it yet (see the video below), just bring the index and thumb of the hand wearing the watch together twice for it to recognize the command to control an app. These users are the first who were able to try it thanks to the developer beta of the latest watchOS update, 10.1, whose final version has just been released.

What exactly is it for? The truth is that it does not have a specific function and what it does will depend on the app that is running at that moment, allowing you to control its main button: if they call us, it is used to pick up or hang up; If the watch's camera control is open, it will take a photo... And so on a wide variety of examples: stop a timer, play, pause music or change songs, snooze an alarm and even respond to a message with your voice.

One thing to keep in mind is that it is disabled by default. It is activated from the device itself or in the iPhone Watch app and involves giving permissions to the system to deactivate some accessibility options that may interfere with it. In fact, it disables a very similar feature that previous Apple Watch models have, although many users are not aware of it: they are Hand Gestures, a set of gestures hidden among the accessibility options (inside of the AssistiveTouch function) that work in a very similar way. Thus, the same pinch gesture moves you to the next menu item; a double pinch goes back; if you close your hand into a fist, you select an item; and if you do it twice, it opens the actions menu (which allows you to scroll the screen, tap the Digital Crown and other options).

Compatible with the Apple Watch Series 4 and later, the first-generation Apple Watch SE and later, and the Apple Watch Ultra, it's especially interesting that these gestures can be customized to choose what each one does.

What will be the future?
The idea of Apple engineers is to continue evolving this function, both in terms of double tap and the rest of the control options that until now were in the accessibility section. This was already foreseen in a paper published in April 2022 titled Enabling the personalization of hand gestures on wrist devices in which they already talked about a combination of gyroscopes, accelerometers and skin reading to determine what the user is being asked to do. device in question with hand movements.

It is a total of 12 gestures that, according to the engineers, must be fully customizable: “To take advantage of the devices they should allow users to add their own gestures beyond a pre-existing gestural vocabulary. This allows these gestures to be remembered better, greater efficiency in the interaction and greater accessibility for people with special needs,” they stated in this document. To enjoy these features we will still have to wait.

 

 

https://elpais.com/tecnologia/tu-tecnologia/2023-10-24/asi-funciona-el-doble-pellizco-del-apple-watch-series-9-y-esto-es-lo-que-hara-en-el-futuro.html