Your Apple Watch is about to become far less annoying in movie theaters because the “Theater Mode” feature rumored to be coming to the iPhone is actually destined for your wrist. Apple tipped off developers to that feature and more in an overview of what’s coming in watchOS 3.2.
According to Apple’s notes, Theater Mode is part of watchOS 3.1.3, but isn’t visible yet. Presumably it’ll come to life when watchOS 3.2 rolls out.
Theater Mode lets you mute Apple Watch sounds and prevents the screen from lighting up when you raise your wrist. Notifications still come through, and you can see the display by tapping it or pressing the Digital Crown.
watchOS 3.2 also adds SiriKit support so you can perform tasks like booking rides, starting workouts, and search photos with voice commands. Apple says SiriKit in watchOS 3.2 supports messaging, payments, ride booking, workouts, calling, and searching photos.
The update also adds support for Apple’s AVAudioPlayer APIs, which makes activating audio playback easier.
In other words, Apple Watch is about to get far more useful.
Since the watchOS 3.2 release notes are available to developers now, the beta version is probably about to roll out. There isn’t any word on when it’s coming, so for now we’ll have to go with “real soon.”
That would be a very nice feature.