Wondering how multitasking will work on the Apple Watch? Just tap twice. Here’s how it works.
The Apple Watch supports a couple of cool double-tap actions. One of them is for the side button: Just double-tap the side button in front of an NFC terminal to pay with Apple Pay. But a reddit user has just spotted an even better one, as shown in the (sorry!) blurry GIF above.
reddit user colinstalter noticed this handy little shortcut:
Double-tapping the Digital Crown switches you between your two most recently opened apps!
It’s awesome. I just messed with it at an Apple Store. It makes it really easy to jump between actions if you are multitasking. It’s also a super quick way back to the watch face if you’ve just been in one app.
That’s a killer little tip right there. If you were worried it’s going to be difficult to multitask on the Apple Watch, you needn’t have been. Apple always thinks of everything.
Source: reddit
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
7 responses to “Here’s how you multitask on the Apple Watch”
Outstanding tip! Of all the reviews I read/watch not one of them mentioned this.
Nice find!
Awesome. Thanks for making me even more jealous that some people will get their Apple Watch somewhere near the 24th, and I’ll be waiting until June.
This is incorrect.
A double tap brings up ApplePay, only as a quick way to bring it up when at a register paying for something. This does not switch between recently opened apps. Sorry guys. If you watch the keynote (I forget which one. I watched the watch portions of the last two or three last night) Kevin Lynch mentions this during his walk-through.
But the keynote says double tapping the side rectangle button would bring up Apple Pay. But in the gif its tapping the digital crown. So i guess maybe its really multitasking? but im still doubtful why Apple didn’t even mention such an important feature.
As Untitled ^ said, in the gif, the digital crown is what is being double tapped. I’ve tried this out the other day at the apple store near me and it performs exactly as described. Awesome feature!
Nope, I found that the crown works as a multi-tasking feature in the Apple Store. The rectangle works as the Apple Pay.
Makes sense that multitasking is double tapping the digital crown because it’s basically the home button when single-tapped.
Double tapping the rectangular button, Apple Pay. Single tapping the rectangular button, Contacts.