The latest Apple Watches have a lot of new features that older watches don’t, so I figured it was time for a new list of hacks. While our general Apple Watch and fitness tracking hacks are still golden, Series 12 devices offer new features like native step counting, a Readiness app, an upgraded heart rate sensor, an AI-based version of Siri, and “audio intelligence” that can replay and summarize real-life conversations, within limits. Here’s how to get the most out of them.
Put the steps complication on your watch face to turn it into a simple pedometer
The Series 12 can finally count steps natively, a task that for some reason is only arriving now, and is restricted to just the newest Apple Watch models. Enjoy it! To add a step counter to your watch face, long-press on the clock screen to edit it, tap on a complication (that’s what Apple calls those little icons and numbers that appear on some watch faces), choose Activity, and then tap Steps.
Get better Siri Recaps by turning them off by default
You don’t need this creepy feature listening in to everything, but it can be nice to have it as a backup on occasion. A button in your Apple Watch’s Control Center can turn the feature on and off. Keep it off except when you have a structured conversation that you’ll want to refer to later. This feature is currently in beta (which you can try now if you want to), but is expected to be available to everyone later this year.
It’s worth turning off the default setting not just because of the creepiness factor, but also because the recaps work best when there is a single subject of conversation, with a clear start and end, and just one context. If you leave recaps running all the time, your doctor’s appointment will get mixed in with your grocery shopping, YouTube watching, and everyday chatter.
To finish off a recap and make it useful, take a look at the recap shortly after the conversation, tap the three-dots menu, and hit Edit. You’ll be able to adjust the notes and add your own important details. Siri won’t identify speakers and seems to shy away from including certain details, like people’s names. You can add in what it missed and also create your own bullet points so that everything gets noted down while it’s still fresh in your mind.
Learn these gestures to access features more easily
This one isn’t specific to the Series 12, but if you haven’t gotten on board with the pinch and wrist flick gestures yet, now is a great time.
First, the wrist flick: If a notification is on your screen, or you’re otherwise looking at something you’d rather be done with, just flick your wrist away from you and then back toward you, as if there were a crumb on the watch face and you wanted to knock it off. This will bring you back to the watch face and close whatever you were looking at.
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The double pinch is another useful one, although Apple calls it double tap. This is confusing because you aren’t double tapping the watch, you’re tapping your thumb and forefinger together while wearing the watch. You don’t need to touch the watch face at all. So, when you get a notification or a call, look at it on your watch, and pinch your thumb and forefinger (of the watch hand) together twice. The watch detects the pinch from subtle movements in your wrist, and it will open the notification. You can then use the wrist flick to close the notification. Performing a double pinch when no notification is on screen will bring up your smart stack. You can then double-pinch to move to the next card in the smart stack, or single-pinch to open that card and see its details.
If you want to learn even more gestures, go into the Watch app, and select Accessibilityand then Hand gestures. You can remap a whole-fist “clench” to do the same thing as pressing the digital crown, for example, or to open the control center or Siri.
Slap your watch to make Siri shut up
A little rude, perhaps, but helpful: With the new AI-based Siri, sometimes answers to questions can be long-winded. If Siri launches into a novel-length response and you’re not interested in hearing all that, just put your palm over the screen. You’ll instantly be transported back to your watch face, and the Siri response will stop.
If you still want to see those longer responses without having Siri read the whole thing to you, you can set this up on your phone, and the settings will carry over to your watch. On your iPhone, go to Settings and tap Siri, then Responses. Select Silent responses instead of Spoken responses. You can then read through her answers, or skim them, as you prefer.
