The Apple Watch app

Two things you can do with a wrist: talk to Pepper, and cook from a saved recipe without going to find your phone.

Setting it up

The watch app installs alongside the iPhone app — there's nothing separate to download. It has no sign-in screen of its own: it picks up your session from your iPhone, so sign in on your phone first. If the watch shows "Sign in to Pepper on your iPhone," that's the fix.

Talking

Tap Talk to Pepper and you're in a live voice call with Pepper — the same conversation as the voice mode in web chat, just on your wrist. To cut Pepper off mid-answer, just start talking — or, on watches where it can't hear you while it's speaking, tap the raised-hand Interrupt button on the left and then speak. The transcript follows the conversation, showing the latest words. Turn the crown to make Pepper louder or quieter, and the stop button on the right hangs up. The full exchange is saved to your conversation, so it's in your phone's chat afterward like anything else you said to Pepper.

The watch will ask for microphone access the first time; without it, it can't listen.

Cooking a recipe

Open Recipes for a plain list of what you've saved (see Meals for saving recipes in the first place) — just names, big enough to tap, no search or photos. Pick one and Pepper turns it into steps sized for a glance: one action on screen at a time, short enough to read from across a counter, generated fresh from the recipe rather than however its original text happened to be written. Swipe or press Next to move through them.

• Timers run even if you stop looking. A step with a time in it gets a timer button; start it and the watch will alert you when it's done, whether the app is open, in the background, or the screen has gone dark to save power. That alert needs notifications allowed for Pepper on your iPhone's Watch app — without them, a timer still runs but only taps your wrist while the app stays open. Starting a timer on a later step replaces one already running — there's only one at a time.
• The screen dims but keeps showing your step. On the wrist-down display, the title and controls drop away and the step and its progress stay, so you don't lose your place.
• Leaving the recipe doesn't stop a running timer. Going back to the watch face, or closing the app, is exactly when a timer is doing its job.

Sending a walkthrough from your phone

You don't have to go find a recipe or a workout on the watch itself. Open a recipe in Recipes, or today's session in Workouts (see Meals and Workouts), and a Walk through on Apple Watch button sends it straight to your wrist — it says "Sent to your watch" once it's gone, and opening it there picks up exactly what you were looking at on the phone or web.

The button only shows up once your watch has been set up — open Pepper there at least once first. If it's missing, or it says "Open Pepper on your watch once, then try again," that's the fix. "Couldn't reach your watch" is a different problem, and not a setup one — re-opening the watch app won't help. Try the button again; if it keeps happening, it isn't something on your end.

Good to know

• There's no chat, no history, and no other apps here — just talking and cooking. Everything else is a trip to your phone or the web.
• You can't edit a recipe from the watch; that happens in Recipes on the phone or web (see Meals).
• See Apps for the iPhone app's own apps, and Ways to reach Pepper for every other way to talk to Pepper.

Things to try

• Cook with messy hands. Walk through a saved recipe step by step on your Apple Watch, with a timer where one is needed — nothing to wake on the counter.
  Needs an Apple Watch.