{"id":16078,"date":"2026-07-10T09:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T16:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/10\/will-you-miss-the-walkie-talkie-apple-watch-app-when-watchos-27-drops-push-to-talk\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T12:46:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T19:46:26","slug":"will-you-miss-the-walkie-talkie-apple-watch-app-when-watchos-27-drops-push-to-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/10\/will-you-miss-the-walkie-talkie-apple-watch-app-when-watchos-27-drops-push-to-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"Will you miss the Walkie-Talkie Apple Watch app when watchOS 27 drops push-to-talk?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<figure class=\"img-border featured-image\">\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Apple Watch is losing its Walkie-Talkie app in this fall&#8217;s watchOS 27 software update. Will you miss the Apple Watch&#8217;s push-to-talk functionality? <\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-1060319\"\/><\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-apple-hasn-t-said-why-it-s-discontinuing-the-walkie-talkie-app\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Apple has not said why it is discontinuing the Walkie-Talkie app<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over the years, the Apple Watch has been a playground for weird ideas that end up taking off. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Spinning the Digital Crown from the watch face is used to move data for issues such as weather and calendar events forward or backward in time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Clicking the side button opened the circle of friends. Digital Touch still exists as an iMessage app, but it was originally an exclusive communication method for the Apple Watch. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even the Apple Watch face comes and goes. They are sometimes replaced by watchOS features such as the Smart Stack widgets that replaced the Siri watch face.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sometimes licensing deals seem to expire (the Toy Story clock face couldn&#8217;t see Toy Story 5). Sometimes the best watch faces just disappear without a description or a comparable one. I still miss the excellent Explorer watch that came with the Apple Watch Series 3 mobile.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-watchos-27-update-erases-walkie-talkie-app-and-functionality\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The watchOS 27 update removes the Walkie-Talkie app and functionality<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Walkie-Talkie mode is the latest playground experiment to disappear after an Apple Watch software update. watchOS 27 is coming this fall, and the push-to-talk feature that only works between Apple Watches is gone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On a system level aspect, the Walkie-Talkie was complex. You need to add the connection directly to the Walkie-Talkie app. You also had to leave Walkie-Talkie mode on to receive voice messages. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The concept was real-time voice communication that happened in real time. It sits between a live audio call and sending voice memos back and forth. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Walkie-Talkie app was never really for me. I didn&#8217;t like that being in Walkie-Talkie mode and receiving messages, the yellow app icon needed to always be displayed on your watch face. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I get why it worked that way. You wouldn&#8217;t want your watch to play audio messages from your contacts without knowing for sure that you&#8217;re in that mode. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed alignwide is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<p><div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"L2_ypiHNOw4\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Apple Watch Walkie-Talkie app watchOS 5 hands-on! [9to5Mac]\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/L2_ypiHNOw4?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I didn&#8217;t really trust the Walkie-Talkie to relay the message reliably.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m sure the audio messages I sent were delivered. I wasn&#8217;t sure if the receiver was in a position where he could hear the message as it played.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was something unintentional about playing again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you ask me, I&#8217;m surprised Walkie-Talkie has been around as a system-level feature all this time. It must have enjoyed greater discovery built-in than if it were an App Store app you downloaded and subscribed to, but it was far from it, in my experience.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-will-you-miss-the-apple-watch-push-to-talk-feature\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Will you miss the Apple Watch feature to talk?<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I also know from discussing the Walkie-Talkie app on podcasts over the years that the voice user base relies on the push-to-talk feature for practical communication.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That makes me think that the demise of Walkie-Talkie as the Apple Watch&#8217;s exclusive voice chat option isn&#8217;t the end of the story. Just this week, I saw a Walkie-Talkie icon on someone&#8217;s watch face at work.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe we&#8217;ll see it return as an Apple platform app in the future. Or maybe it&#8217;s just too weird for Apple to invest today, and there&#8217;s a gap a third-party app will fill when Walkie-Talkie gets wiped out by watchOS 27 this fall. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyway, how&#8217;s your Walkie-Talkie app? Share your thoughts in the comments!<\/p>\n<div class=\"google-preferred-source-badge\">\n<p>\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"google-preferred-source-badge-dark\" src=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/themes\/ninetofive\/dist\/images\/google-preferred-source-badge-dark.png\" alt=\"Add 9to5Mac as a favorite source on Google\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"google-preferred-source-badge-light\" src=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/themes\/ninetofive\/dist\/images\/google-preferred-source-badge-light.png\" alt=\"Add 9to5Mac as a favorite source on Google\"\/><\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"ad-disclaimer-container\">\n<p class=\"disclaimer-affiliate\"><em>FTC: We use auto affiliate links to earn income.<\/em> More.<\/p>\n<p><!-- post ad --><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Apple Watch is losing its Walkie-Talkie app in this fall&#8217;s watchOS 27 software update. Will you miss the Apple Watch&#8217;s push-to-talk functionality? Apple has not said why it is discontinuing the Walkie-Talkie app Over the years, the Apple Watch has been a playground for weird ideas that end up taking off. Spinning the Digital [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16079,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-smartphones-tablets"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16080,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16078\/revisions\/16080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}