During Wednesday’s Surprise and Shine event, Apple unveiled a new meeting-transcription tool for the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4. This tool is part of a broader suite of fresh audio intelligence capabilities designed to monitor and process sounds directly from your wrist.
Dubbed Siri Recap, the tool relies on background listening to capture the essence of your discussions. Powered by Apple Intelligence, the system automatically creates a heading, an overview, and main takeaways from the dialogue, which users can later view inside the Siri application.
According to Apple, users have full control over the tool, with options to leave it constantly active, establish a custom schedule, or disable it entirely.
This meeting assistant was just one of several audio-centric updates revealed for the wearable. Apple’s upgraded sound intelligence now integrates an instant-recognition version of Shazam, bringing the device on par with Google’s ‘Now Playing’ functionality. Additionally, the smartwatch can now detect prominent environmental sounds—such as crying infants, doorbells, alarms, or sirens—and alert the wearer immediately.
Another addition is Live Rewind, a feature that allows wearers to instantly replay the last 15 seconds of a conversation by double-pressing the Digital Crown.
The tech giant stressed that these tools do not save actual voice recordings, ensuring that raw audio remains completely private. Furthermore, Siri Recap does not track who is speaking, and any retrieved Live Rewind snippets are protected with end-to-end encryption. Even with these security measures, a feature that constantly listens is bound to spark privacy worries, as Siri Recap could still log confidential details within its generated text summaries.
Apart from its specific privacy guardrails, Siri Recap functions much like existing note-taking applications such as Circleback and Granola, both of which already offer dedicated Apple Watch versions.
