This week, a company called Doublepoint released a new app called WowMouse during CES, which turns Android smartwatches such as the Samsung Galaxy Watch into gesture-based mice for your computer. This means waving your arms to move the mouse and pinching your fingers together to click (similar to the double-click feature on Apple Watch Series 9). The app is now available on the Google Play Store.
WowMouse works by advertising your watch as a Bluetooth Human Interface Device (HID) mouse, allowing it to be used with a variety of operating systems by simply pairing it like any other Bluetooth mouse. According to the Doublepoint website, this includes Windows, Linux, macOS and iPadOS. It has been confirmed to work with some Wear OS watches, such as the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, 5, and 6, but the company says tap detection on the Pixel Watch is inconsistent. The Apple Watch does not support Bluetooth HID, so Doublepoint writes that it cannot develop apps for watchOS.
You can easily see how well it works – video game controllers have done a great job with motion control like this over the years. A brief video from Snazzy Labs on Thursday certainly looks like that.
The company has bigger ambitions, though: The announcement pitches manufacturers and developers to license its software to do things like dim smart lights by turning your wrist, like this Technology Network video:
This is a super fun, futuristic trick that I’m all for! But it’s hard to see anyone dedicating resources to supporting an app that only works for a small portion of the smartwatch market.
