Apple Seeds Third Beta of watchOS 10.1 to Developers

Tuesday October 10, 2023 10:05 am PDT by Juli Clover

Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming watchOS 10.1 update to developers for testing purposes, with the beta coming a week after the release of the second watchOS 10.1 beta.

Apple Watch Faces watchOS 10 Feature Blue
To install the ‌watchOS 10‌.1 update, developers will need to open the Apple Watch app, go to the Software Update section under "General" in Settings, and toggle on the ‌watchOS 10‌.1 Developer Beta. An Apple ID linked to a developer account is required.

Once beta updates have been activated, ‌watchOS 10.1‌ can be downloaded under the same Software Update section. To install software, an Apple Watch needs to have 50 percent battery life and it must be placed on an Apple Watch charger.

watchOS 10.1 adds NameDrop support for sharing contact information with another Apple Watch or an iPhone, plus it includes Double Tap.

NameDrop can be used by tapping into the Apple Watch Contacts app, selecting your profile, and tapping on the "Share" option. From there, touching the Apple Watch to another Apple Watch running watchOS 10.1 or an iPhone running iOS 17 will initiate a contact transfer.

Double Tap is a gesture exclusive to the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra, and it allows users to tap their thumb and index fingers together to do things like bring up the Smart Stack, start a call, pause a song, and more.

Related Roundups: watchOS 26, watchOS 27

Related Forum: Apple Watch

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Top Rated Comments

mnsportsgeek

40 months ago

Does this fix the disastrous battery life?

Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)

DribbleCastle

40 months ago

Double tap has been pretty good so far.... only issue i have is if you quickly put your wrist down after doing the gesture it might cancel out of the action you double tapped for. It is annoying when i use the feature to fast forward 10 seconds on YouTubeTV app on the AppleTV. FYI i do this to avoid the horrible UI and dimmed screen that happens when you fast forward using the remote (new or old Siri remote). Gotta speed watch football somehow.

Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)