Last week, as part of the watchOS 10.1 update, Apple added a feature it calls “double tap” to its latest wearables, theApple Watch Series 9and Watch Ultra 2. The new-to-Apple feature, which the company touts as made possible by its latest S9 SiP wearable chipset, lets you perform various actions on Apple Watch by tapping your fingers together. This may seem familiar to some Wear OS fans: the Galaxy Watch series has similar options squirreled away in its settings that allow you to assign different actions to different gestures. But as nice as it is to revel in a little Android-did-it-first smugness about Apple features, I’m mostly feeling jealous — and maybe a little concerned — that thePixel Watch 2I wear doesn’t offer any gesture control options at all.
Apple’s double tap and Samsung’s universal gestures
On compatible Apple Watches, the double tap gesture — tapping your index finger and thumb together twice — does different things depending on the context. It can, for example, answer an incoming phone call, or dismiss a timer, or take a photo when you’re using the watch as a camera remote for a connected iPhone.
Galaxy Watch devices running One UI 5 Watch offer a pretty wide variety of gesture control options, too. In the watches’Advanced featuressettings, there’s an option for a feature called “quick launch” that opens the app or performs the action of your choice when you make a sort of knocking gesture.
For even more gesture customization, you may dive into your Galaxy Watch’s accessibility settings to activate “universal gestures,” which lets you assign various actions to different hand gestures, including making a fist, and — you guessed it — pinching your thumb and forefinger together two times. You can use universal gestures to navigate your Galaxy Watch’s UI entirely one-handed, or as shortcuts to various watch features.
No such options on Pixel Watch
Both generations of Pixel Watch, meanwhile, are lacking any type of gesture control options. Apple is positioning double tap largely as a convenience feature — a way for you to take action on incoming notification when your other hand is occupied carrying a cup of coffee or holding your dog’s leash. Coming at it from that angle, it feels like I’m missing out: I do often ignore my Pixel Watch’s buzzes and beeps when my right hand is busy because I know I can’t do anything about them until later anyway.
Samsung’s take, though, makes it clear there’s more at stake here than my ability to easily reply to a text while I’m walking my dogs. Alternative control options for touchscreen devices can be big for accessibility: the universal gesture settings on Samsung’s Galaxy Watches really do make it possible to navigate the watch’s entire UI without ever touching its screen. It’s not as fast, but it’s functional, and that can be a big deal for anybody who has trouble interacting with smartwatches using their opposite hand.
Maybe someday
Apple hails its new tap gesture as an innovation only made possible by the company’s latest hardware, but that’s a stretch. Samsung’s existingWear OS smartwatches— all of them, going back to the Galaxy Watch 4 series — can recognize not only similar tap gestures, but also when you make a fist, when you mime a knocking movement, and when you quickly twist your wrist. And way back when Wear OS was called Android Wear, flicking your wrist in a twisting motion to scroll through the watch UI was a standard option, no special hardware needed.
Gesture controls like what’s available on Galaxy Watch devices — and so also like Apple’s double tap gesture — should be possible on existing Pixel Watch hardware, and I’m hoping Google decides to implement a similar setup. Gesture controls are a fun and impressive trick, sure, but given the accessibility implications, it seems to me like some form of gesture control ought to be baked into Wear OS itself at some point in the future. My fingers are crossed that happens sooner than later.
Google Pixel Watch 2
It may lack gesture control options, but with quick performance, improved battery life, and the same great aesthetic as the original, the Google Pixel Watch 2 is still an excellent Wear OS watch.
