Announcing TigerText for Apple Watch in iOS 5.3

Overall, TigerText for Apple Watch should feel pretty familiar. Like TigerText for other iOS devices, it lets you send and receive secure messages and see when those messages are delivered and read. It lets you navigate your inbox and see summaries of conversations, with a count of unread messages at the right. Clicking into a message thread, you can browse message histories and see photo attachment previews. The most unique aspects of this new app are how it handles notifications and replies, enabling users to connect with colleagues hands-free. Read on for a summary of each key function.

How to access this feature:

After updating to iOS 5.3, users can enable TigerText for Apple Watch using the My Watch app on their iPhone.

Let’s start with notifications, which begin with a raise of your wrist. TigerText notifications will alert you to new incoming messages according to your device settings. When you glance at the watch after feeling or hearing a notification from TigerText, you’ll see the app logo which is a “short-look” notification of a new message. Tapping on the TigerText logo opens a “long look” summary with more details, like who sent the message and a quick preview of the message.

Think you may have missed a message? Anytime you’d like to review notifications from TigerText, you’ll find them in the push notification stream when you swipe down from the top of the device.

For a more complete summary, you can use TigerText’s Glance View by swiping up on the watch face at any time and scrolling to TigerText in the carousel. There you’ll see aa running total of all new messages above a list of the three most recent conversations with unread messages.

TigerText for Apple Watch also helps you send and respond to messages with greater ease. Click to open the app and you’ll find yourself on a familiar-looking screen: the inbox.

Here, conversations are sorted by most recent unread message, with the number of unread messages shown in red at the right. Each message thread displays a quick summary of the last message. At the top of the inbox you’ll see the current org name displayed. With a hard Force Press you can select a different org from a menu of options.

Press on a conversation to open the thread where you can scroll back through a history of messages and see previews of attached images.

To reply within a message thread, Force Touch the screen (press hard.) For replies, you can choose from a list of preset responses or use speech-to-text dictation and speak into the watch.