Apple has quietly removed a handy Apple Watch shortcut in watchOS 27, and it affects even older models that don’t get the new replacement feature.
The update, released on September 14, changes what happens when you double-click the Digital Crown. In watchOS 26, the gesture lets you quickly switch between your current app and the one you used previously, making it a surprisingly useful way to multitask without touching the display.
That shortcut is gone in watchOS 27. Double-clicking the Digital Crown now brings up the dynamic app grid, just like a single click does.
The change is tied to Apple’s new Live Rewind feature, which will arrive on the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 later this year. Live Rewind can provide a transcript of spoken audio picked up by the watch during the previous 15 seconds, and Apple has assigned the Digital Crown double-click to activate it.
That makes sense for the new watches, but there’s a catch: Live Rewind is hardware-dependent and isn’t coming to older Apple Watch models. Yet those watches lose the app-switching shortcut when they upgrade to watchOS 27 anyway.
So, owners of older Apple Watches get neither feature. They lose a shortcut they’ve had since watchOS 26, while the functionality that replaced it isn’t available to them.
There’s also a potential issue for Series 12 and Ultra 4 owners who don’t want to use Live Rewind. The feature involves recording and transcribing recently captured audio, so some users may have privacy concerns about using it. Apple currently doesn’t offer an option to keep the double-click assigned to app switching instead.
The timing is particularly notable because Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 launch today, September 18, after just under a week of pre-orders.
For now, there’s no setting that brings the old shortcut back. Users can send feedback to Apple, but they’ll have to wait and see whether a future watchOS update changes how the Digital Crown double-click works.
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