Apple Watch's new feature listens to your chats and recaps them

At its Surprise and Shine event on Wednesday, Apple launched a meeting notetaker for the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, one of a series of new audio intelligence features that let the watches listen to sounds around the wearer. The feature, called Siri Recap, uses ambient listening to take high-level notes of conversations, according to the company. Apple Intelligence automatically generates a title, summary, and key points from the conversation, which can then be reviewed in the new Siri app. Apple said users can choose to keep the feature always on, set up a schedule, or turn it off completely.

Siri Recap wasn’t the only audio-focused feature introduced for the Watch during the event. Apple’s new audio intelligence features also include Shazam, which can identify songs instantly — meaning Apple has finally caught up to Google’s Now Playing feature. The Watch can also recognize loud sounds like sirens, alarms, doorbells, or a baby crying and notify users. Apple also introduced Live Rewind, which lets users recap 15 seconds of conversation by double-pressing the Digital Crown.

Apple emphasized that the features don’t store recordings and that raw audio is inaccessible. Siri Recap doesn’t identify speakers, either. Users can access Live Rewind recaps, which are end-to-end encrypted. Despite these guardrails, an always-listening feature will likely raise privacy concerns because Siri Recap may still capture sensitive information in its summaries. Besides the privacy features, Siri Recap sounds similar to other notetakers like Granola and Circleback, which also have Apple Watch apps.

Why it matters

As standalone AI notetakers race to add wearable hardware, Apple is folding the same capability directly into its existing Watch install base — a distribution advantage rivals like Granola and Circleback can’t easily match.