Assistive Touch is a new accessibility feature introduced in watchOS 8. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge
Starting with watchOS 8, Apple introduced a new accessibility feature called Assistive Touch. The cool thing about this feature is that it allows you to control the watch via gestures and your arm movements. Meaning, now you don’t even need to touch the Apple Watch screen to use it.
The tech behind it is pretty neat. Using on-device machine learning, the feature makes use of the watch’s accelerometer, gyroscope, and optical heart rate sensor to read how your muscles and tendons move. The result is that the watch can tell when you’re pinching your fingers or clenching your fists. You can also enable a motion-based cursor that works like a mini-mouse when you tilt your arm.
To be clear, Apple developed Assistive Touch to make the Apple…