watchOS 27.3 arrived this week in beta alongside iOS 27.3, with a major new feature for the latest Apple Watch models: Siri Recap, which I’m already really loving.
Siri Recap in watchOS 27.3 and iOS 27.3 makes the Apple Watch a powerful AI tool
If you bought an Apple Watch Series 12 or Apple Watch Ultra 4 this fall, there are two exclusive new features coming in watchOS 27.3: Siri Recap and Live Rewind.
Both ‘Audio Intelligence’ features were announced at Apple’s September keynote, but just debuted in beta this week.
Siri Recap in particular has stirred some controversy. Here’s what the feature does, per Apple:
Siri Recap ambiently takes notes on your conversations throughout your day and creates high-level Apple Intelligence–generated summaries that you can use later to jog your memory, so you can stay present in the moment. Siri Recaps can be set to automatically delete after a period of up to 7 days unless you choose to explicitly save them.
It’s understandable why users would be concerned. Once enabled, Siri Recap can turn your Apple Watch into a device that’s always listening and often takes notes on what it hears.
This article isn’t about making the privacy case for the feature. You can read Apple’s privacy protections here. Briefly though, key details include: there’s no speaker attribution or logging of sensitive information like financial data, authentication data, or personal identifiers; no audio is stored or recorded; the feature is opt-in; and you can set times or places where it stays disabled.
Speaking strictly of the functionality of Siri Recap itself, however, I’ve been very impressed.
My experience with Siri Recap so far
I enabled Siri Recap after installing the iOS and watchOS 27.3 betas on Tuesday. When I checked the first recaps on Wednesday inside the Siri app, I was blown away.
Siri had created a record of the things I’d done Tuesday afternoon and evening with remarkable accuracy and detail, as seen above.
One example that especially shocked me: after shopping for Christmas decorations with my family, Siri documented the size of a table runner we looked at. The thing is, I had no memory of anyone even mentioning its size. My wife must have, but despite me missing it, Siri wrote it down.
Another fun one: Thursday morning during breakfast, my son wanted to listen some music on our HomePod. Later that day, I found that the songs we’d listened to were saved at the bottom of my latest recap.
It’s still very early days with Siri Recap, which is only in beta right now, but what I’ve seen this week has been really exciting. And so far at least, I’ve seen zero information in a recap that I’d consider too sensitive to be included.
What’s your take on Siri Recap? Have you given it a try? Let us know in the comments.
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