GoKawiil
Tech News
Apple's watchOS 27.2 beta 2, released to developers, brings back the App Switcher feature that had been removed in watchOS 27. Instead of the old double-click of the Digital Crown, users now activate it by pressing and holding the bottom of the screen while inside an app, then turning the crown to scroll through recent apps.
Apple's watchOS 27 introduces a Siri app with chat history, matching similar updates on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. However, unlike those versions, the Apple Watch interface doesn't offer an obvious way to continue a previous conversation from within the app.
Apple has removed the double-click Digital Crown shortcut that let users instantly jump between apps on Apple Watch in watchOS 27. The company reassigned that same gesture to trigger Live Rewind, a new Audio Intelligence feature that generates a 15-second transcript of recent spoken audio, but Live Rewind only works on the upcoming Series 12 and Ultra 4 hardware.
Apple confirmed watchOS 27 will launch on September 14, bringing a dedicated Siri app with a more capable, synced assistant to Apple Watch. The update also reworks the Digital Crown into a dynamic app grid, drops Walkie-Talkie, and adds a unified Find My app plus expanded Smart Stack and Workout Buddy features. The update runs on Apple Watch Series 9 and later, Ultra 2 and later, and the new SE 3.
Apple's upcoming watchOS 27 update, expected later this month, removes the Walkie-Talkie app entirely and eliminates the double-click Digital Crown gesture that previously let users jump between two apps. It also changes single-click behavior on the Digital Crown, now always opening a dynamic app grid instead of the traditional static launcher.
Apple's watchOS 27 beta eliminates the long-standing feature where double-clicking the Digital Crown quickly toggled between two recently used apps or the last app and the watch face. Instead, a single or double click now brings up the same new 'dynamic app grid' showing Siri plus five suggested apps, meaning the quick-switch shortcut has no direct replacement. The writer flagged this to Apple as early as June and again during the July public beta, but the behavior persists as of the current beta.