Free smartwatch app uses gesture tech to turn you into a human computer mouse
Do you sometimes wish your smartwatch was a bit more integrated into your day-to-day life?
Beyond stat tracking and workout guidance, smartwatches can feel a little disconnected from your other bits of tech, except the phone they're tethered to.
But a new app is offering a glimpse at how smartwatches could be used to control way more things in our lives.
#WowMouse 🖱️ turns your smartwatch into a gesture-based #Bluetooth mouse 👋⌚️✨
— Dev Khanna (@CurieuxExplorer) January 14, 2024
🎥 @doublepointlab I @rammylagoo
@fogle_shane @EvanKirstel @JimHarris @Shi4Tech @FrRonconi @Nicochan33 @sallyeaves @Khulood_Almani @Eli_Krumova @NutritiousMind @mvollmer1 @ComesAnnemarie… pic.twitter.com/noslHnVzcf
WowMouse comes from developer Doublepoint and was demonstrated at the recent Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona.
The concept is simple: it basically turns your smartwatch into a remote control, all through a free app.
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It's currently available through the Google Play Store for most Wear OS devices, so it won't work on the Apple Watch at present, but there's a chance it could roll out to more devices soon.
The app basically means you can use your smartwatch like you would a wireless computer mouse. It lets you connect to devices by Bluetooth to complete whatever simple tasks you like (so long as they have support for wireless mouse control).
By wearing your smartwatch and 'tapping' your finger and thumb together in the air, you can control other bits of tech - for example, you can wirelessly connect to an iPad and control it from a short distance away if you wanted to.
You could even connect to a lightbulb and dim or brighten its light with a twisting motion.
It looks impressively intuitive, and the gesture control seems to work very well. Videos of the feature, uploaded to X, show how it can turn your hand into a sort of laser pointer that you can use to control your cursor.
#WowMouse 🖱️ turns your smartwatch into a gesture-based #Bluetooth mouse 👋⌚️✨
— Dev Khanna (@CurieuxExplorer) January 14, 2024
🎥 @doublepointlab I @rammylagoo
@fogle_shane @EvanKirstel @JimHarris @Shi4Tech @FrRonconi @Nicochan33 @sallyeaves @Khulood_Almani @Eli_Krumova @NutritiousMind @mvollmer1 @ComesAnnemarie… pic.twitter.com/noslHnVzcf
The future for this sort of application could be pretty bright, too, with loads of potential ways to integrate with different devices, like AR headsets that therefore wouldn't necessarily need their own controllers or hand-tracking.
The origin of the project was an idea that Jamin Hu, now co-founder and chief technology officer of Doublepoint, had as a student, as explained by CEO and co-founder Ohto Pentikäinen to Euronews Next: "Jamin is a classically trained pianist, and he has this tendency to subconsciously type his thoughts in mid-air, essentially."
Pentikäinen said the project came about because Hu "wanted to make a wristband which could automatically log these messages that he was writing subconsciously".
Now it's thriving and generating buzz at tech shows, and who knows - it could some day become a common phenomenon.