Your Apple Watch Is Getting a Neat New Feature That You'll Actually Use
Earlier this week, Apple gave us a first glimpse of watchOS 26 and the upcoming features it's going to bring to the Apple Watch. And there are quite a few.
Some of the standouts include a more helpful Smart Stack, support for Live Translations (for messages), and 'Workout Buddy' — an AI-powered feature that feeds you real-time data and words of encouragement during your workout.
But out of all the new features and capabilities coming to the Apple Watch, one in particular genuinely has me excited … because I know I'll actually use it.
The feature is called 'Wrist Flick' and it's meant to make it easier to manage unruly Apple Watch notifications, which often aren't that important and/or appear at the most inopportune times. Specifically, you'll be able to dismiss them with a quick flick of your wrist.
With Wrist Flick, you can quickly dismiss things like app notifications, incoming calls and timers by doing a simple movement — quickly rolling your wrist (and Apple Watch) away from you.
Wrist Flick will be an Accessibility feature similar to Double Tap — which lets you control your Apple Watch by tapping your thumb and index fingers together twice — but promises to be infinitely easier to use. Plus, more useful.
As somebody who constantly gets annoyed by random notifications, such a message from my Apple TV or from an Instagram group chat, most of which seem to come when I'm doing a workout, having the ability to quickly dismiss them without even touching my Apple Watch … it seems like a godsend.
Like with Double Tap, Wrist Flick is an Accessibility feature that will only be available on relatively new Apple Watch models — you need a Series 9, Series 10 or Ultra 2.
This means that if you have a first-gen Apple Watch Ultra or any SE model, Wrist Flick will not be supported. The reason is that they don't have Apple's newer S9 (or newer S10) processor.
Apple will officially release watchOS 26 this fall, most likely in early September, when it announces the next-gen Apple Watch models.
To learn more about watchOS 26's upcoming features, check out Apple's blog post.
Tucker Bowe has been on Gear Patrol's editorial team since 2014. As a Tech Staff Writer, he tracks everything in the consumer tech space, from headphones to smartphones, wearables to home theater systems. If it lights up or makes noise, he probably covers it.
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