Your Apple Watch has 2 new controversial listening features – but you have to opt in

Apple's Siri Recap and Live Rewind are now available on the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 with the iOS 27.3 developer beta, according to ZDNET. Both features are opt-in and off by default, the report says.

Siri Recap summarizes conversations by pulling out key takeaways such as dates, times, prices and action items. The report says a user can save the notes in the Siri app or export them to Notes or Journal. Unsaved recaps are deleted after seven days. Siri Recap includes a person's name only if the person introduces themselves or is regularly named in the conversation. The report says the feature also removes self-harm language, financial and authentication data, and personal identifiers.

Live Rewind continuously buffers audio. A double press of the Digital Crown shows a transcript of the past 15 seconds. The report says unused audio is deleted automatically and that the feature is processed on the device, not sent to Apple.

According to ZDNET, Siri Recap processes audio in a Secure Exclave on the S11 chip, then on the paired iPhone, before the text goes to private cloud compute. The report says this process ensures that no one, including Apple, can access the audio data. ZDNET did not independently verify this claim.

Users can turn Siri Recap on or off from Control Center. To enable Live Rewind, users open the Watch app, tap Siri, then tap Live Rewind and turn on "Double Click Digital Crown." The ZDNET author said they had not tested these controls and had not confirmed how to switch Live Rewind off.