ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Siri Recap and Live Rewind are now available to try in beta.
- Siri Recap summarizes your conversations and notes.
- Live Rewind transcribes the last 15 seconds.
Siri Recap and Live Rewind, Apple’s two controversial, always-listening audio intelligence features, are now available on the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 with the iOS 27.3 developer beta. Both functions are opt-in.
Apple unveiled Siri Recap and Live Rewind in September alongside its Series 12 and Ultra 4 smartwatches, but it waited to release the features until after the smartwatches launched. Siri Recap provides a high-level summary of meetings, while Live Rewind continuously records audio so the supervisor can record a transcript of the last 15 seconds.
Also: Apple’s Audio Intelligence primes us for its true AI wearable future
How Siri takes recap conversation notes on Apple Watch
1. Search for Siri Recaps in the Siri app
In the Siri app, users will find a new section called “Recaps,” where both Siri Recaps and Live Rewinds live.
Also: Apple Watch 12 can listen and recap your conversations now – genius or privacy nightmare?
Siri Recap doesn’t listen for nitty-gritty details within a meeting or pick up the text of a transcript. It is more geared towards the key elements of a conversation, such as important dates, times, prices and action items. A demo of the feature featured an off-the-cuff conversation between a parent and a child discussing college application strategies. Siri Recap made notes about the high school activities the student could pursue to include in their application, the topics they could write about in their essay, and the colleges they could consider.
2. Save Siri recaps, export or delete
After a conversation, a user can save the meeting notes in the Siri app or export them to Notes or Journal. If they don’t save the conversation, it will be automatically deleted after seven days.
Apple has developed the feature to exclude certain information from the Siri recap. It includes a person’s name only when they introduce themselves or when their name is regularly brought up in conversation. Otherwise, it avoids the identification of speakers. It also scrubs audio of language that promotes self-harm, financial and authentication data, and personal identifiers.
3. Enable or disable Siri Recaps at any time
You can enable or disable recaps at any time through Control Center. You can create something similar to a Focus mode to automatically activate the feature when your Apple Watch detects that you have reached your office or college lecture. Every morning, Siri Recap sends a notification to alert you that the feature is active. At the end of each day, you’ll get a reminder to check your daily recaps in the Siri app.
The feature constantly assesses whether a conversation is relevant, optimizing its detection based on the context of the conversation, proximity and length. It pauses the summary when a user is on a phone or FaceTime call, playing music or using headphones. It does not work when Bluetooth devices such as AirPods are in use.
Apple/ZDNETHow Live Rewind records 15 second transcripts on Apple Watch
1. Double-press the Digital Crown
Double-press the Digital Crown to view a transcript of the last 15 seconds of the conversation. The Apple Watch will ring and show an animation to indicate it’s in use, then show the transcript for 30 seconds.
Also: Is cellular on Apple Watch worth it? 4 ways people use it – and why I decide
Live Rewind is built for those head-in-the-clouds moments when you miss a bit of information and can’t go back and ask what a speaker said. I’m thinking about how useful this could be in a college lecture or boardroom setting where dozens of people’s conversations and questions prevent someone from asking a clarifying question about what was discussed.
2. Share the live rewind snippet with Siri
The user can send the snippet to the Siri app to save it or ask about it (if they want to look up the definition of a mentioned term or get more information about the history of a mentioned topic, for example). If the user does not act on it, the snippet will be deleted. Every snippet you save is encrypted by iCloud. The audio buffer updates continuously, and unused audio is automatically deleted. It is processed on the device and not sent to Apple.
How Apple Watch protects your audio
To some, an always-on, always-listening smartwatch may sound like a privacy violation waiting to happen. That’s a fair concern, and Apple has taken steps to address privacy and security concerns with its Secure Exclave.
The Secure Exclave explained
Think of the Secure Exclave as a private island on the S11 chip where the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 process audio. A secure audio buffer processes the raw audio, and a secure pairing mechanism privately enables the connection between a paired Apple Watch and iPhone.
Also: The Apple Watch Ultra 4 just hit its lowest price ever before Black Friday
For Siri Recap, the S11 chip listens to detect if the watcher is part of a current conversation. Once detected, the audio enters the Secure Exclave, where it is encrypted and sent to the Secure Exclave on the iPhone. The iPhone turns this audio into condensed text, essentially editing the conversation to remove filler words or irrelevant information, and then sends it to private cloud computing. Private Cloud Compute creates a recap, delivered to your iPhone’s Siri app.
This process ensures that no one, including Apple, can access the audio data.
How to disable Siri Recap and Live Rewind on Apple Watch
Don’t want your Apple Watch to listen to you? Siri Recap and Live Rewind are turned off by default, according to Apple.
If your Apple Watch asks you to enable Audio Intelligence during setup, you can choose which features you want to turn off.
On its support page, Apple said you can “turn off Siri Recap in the Watch app on iPhone.” Once it’s enabled, you can “turn it on or off at any time from the Control Center.” To enable Live Rewind, Apple said to “open the Watch app, tap Siri, then tap Live Rewind and turn on ‘Double Click Digital Crown’.”
I have not tested these controls myself. I would expect you can follow the same steps to disable Live Rewind, but I haven’t confirmed that yet.
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