Watch Beta Adds Audio Recap Tools

Developers can now test two new audio tools on the Apple Watch that process sound from the device's microphone in real time. The features, available in the watchOS 27.3 developer beta released on November 3, allow users to retrieve text from recent conversations and receive automated summaries of their discussions.

Live Rewind provides a text transcript of the last 15 seconds of audio detected by the watch. Users access this snippet by double-pressing the Digital Crown. The tool is designed to help users recall specific words or phrases they may have missed during a conversation. Users can query Siri about the transcribed content or save the text to the Siri app for later review.

Siri Recap functions as an ambient listening tool that generates high-level summaries of conversations. When enabled, Apple Intelligence automatically creates a title and key points for each interaction. These summaries appear in the Siri app, allowing users to revisit the details of a discussion after it has ended.

Apple released the beta alongside an expanded list of supported languages. The update includes global English, Chinese in both Simplified and Traditional forms, French, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

The company also launched a redesigned Health app in the iOS 27.3 developer beta on the same day. This update introduces an Insights tab that displays daily summaries for heart, sleep, and fitness data. A For You section offers personalized recommendations, while the app includes educational videos and articles on various health topics.

In a privacy overview document, Apple detailed how the system handles audio data. The company states that raw audio is processed within dedicated hardware and is not saved as a file. The audio is not accessible to the operating system, other apps, or Apple servers. If a user saves a summary or transcript with iCloud two-factor authentication and a device passcode enabled, the data syncs across devices using end-to-end encryption.

The features are currently limited to the developer beta channel. Apple has not announced a specific date for the public release of watchOS 27.3.