Apple’s Audio Intelligence features for Apple Watch have begun beta testing with developers through the iOS 27.3 update. The opt-in tools are designed for Apple Watch Series 12 owners and cover sound recognition, song identification, conversation snippets and AI-generated notes.
Live Rewind lets users double-press the Digital Crown to view a text snippet of what was said in the previous 15 seconds. They can dismiss it or save it in the Siri app. An “Ask Siri” option can also answer questions about the snippet. Apple says a chime and on-screen animation indicate when the feature is capturing speech, and unsaved snippets are deleted after 30 seconds.
Siri Recaps creates a short summary and bullet points highlighting information from a conversation, such as dates, deadlines or pricing. Apple says it does not identify speakers, store the original audio or produce a word-for-word transcript. Users can review the recaps and choose whether to save them to Notes or export them to Journal; unsaved recaps are deleted within seven days.
Recaps can be enabled manually or set to run on a schedule, and users can turn them off at any time in Control Center. The feature is also designed not to capture conversations while the user is listening to music with headphones or using noise cancellation. Apple says it omits certain sensitive information, including government identifiers and financial or authentication data.
The system uses the watch’s S11 chip and microphone alongside Apple Intelligence models on the paired iPhone and Apple’s Private Cloud Compute. Apple says audio is handled in a secure enclave and that conversation summaries sent to Private Cloud Compute are deleted there after processing. The company also says the features should not affect watch or phone battery life.
Audio Intelligence also includes sound recognition for alerts such as sirens, alarms and doorbells, and song identification using Shazam. Apple says the features will reach a public beta before becoming generally available.
Sources: TechCrunch.