Why watchOS 27 removes the useful multitasking feature on Apple Watch
While we don’t know if it will make a return, we at least now know why the gesture was removed. Live Rewind replaces switching between apps, but only on Series 12 and Ultra 4 Prior to updating to watchOS 27, Apple Watch Series 11, Ultra 3, and SE 3 support a shortcut for jumping between apps. You can double-click the Digital Crown to instantly switch between the current app and the previously used app.
- ▪While we don’t know if it will make a return, we at least now know why the gesture was removed.
- ▪Live Rewind replaces switching between apps, but only on Series 12 and Ultra 4 Prior to updating to watchOS 27, Apple Watch Series 11, Ultra 3, and SE 3 support a shortcut for jumping between apps.
- ▪You can double-click the Digital Crown to instantly switch between the current app and the previously used app.
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| Original publisher | 9to5Mac |
| Canonical URL | https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/15/why-watchos-27-removes-the-useful-multitasking-feature-on-apple-watch/ |
| Publication time | Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:42:06 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-15T16:46:52.559Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-15T16:46:52.559Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | xK5MDJl_Ufsa · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
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