Finnish startup Doublepoint announced WowMouse, a free app for Apple Watch, this week at CES 2025. This app uses your wearable's sensors, compass, and accelerometer to turn your hand into a mouse, allowing you to control your device through hand gestures.
Apple Watch already uses similar technology for its Double Tap feature when it released in 2023. Apple Watch detects small wrist movements when you tap your thumb and index finger together and records them as clicks on your device.
Mac Control Image Credit: Maxwell Zeff
Doublepoint also does this, but takes it a step further, although they make more accurate claims than Apple. WowMouse lets you point your hand at your Mac and use a companion app to control the cursor on your computer screen. The startup also plans to expand to Bluetooth-enabled devices, allowing you to control smart lights with a point.
Jamin Hu, Doublepoint's chief technology officer, placed the Apple Watch in my right hand and pointed it at a floor lamp across the room. Then the lamp began to shine. A tap with my thumb and forefinger turned off the light, but rotating my palm toward the ceiling made it even brighter.
Controlling lights (Credit: Maxwell Zeff)Image credit: Maxwell Zeff
Normally, you would have to pull out your phone, open an app, and turn on the smart lights in your house one by one. But with Doublepoint's app, you can now control your smart home devices with just a wave of your hand. Hu says there is an initial setup stage where the app shows you where the lights are in your home. But then WowMouse will know which device you're pointing at.
The magic behind Doublepoint's technology lies in a deep neural network trained on a very large custom dataset of hand gestures. Everyone's finger taps and hand gestures are a little different, but this large dataset allows Doublepoint's underlying model to understand user intent.
In fact, 100,000 people have already downloaded the WowMouse app from the Google Play Store, which Doublepoint introduced at CES last year. The company launched on Apple's App Store on Sunday and already has thousands of users.
wowmouse app for Apple Watch. Image credit: Doublepoint
Big tech companies and hardware startups are developing smart glasses that use voice as an interface, but these devices still require some kind of handheld component. The Orion AR glasses, which Meta demonstrated in September, use an electrocardiogram wristband that allows users to scroll and click buttons while wearing the smart glasses.
DoublePoint CEO Oto Pentikainen said the technology could work in smart glasses in a similar way, but could use sensors already present in typical watches. He said there is.
Founded in 2019, Doublepoint initially manufactured its own hardware. A few years ago, the company shifted its focus to developing software that works with smartwatch giants like Apple, Google, Fitbit, and Whoop. DoublePoint has so far raised $6.5 million, partially borrowed from the Finnish government, and plans to complete another round of funding in 2025.
Eventually, DoublePoint hopes to license its technology to smartwatch manufacturers. The company's WowMouse app has developed a loyal following, but creating interface technology in someone else's closed ecosystem can have its limitations.
For example, if you want to use WowMouse to control your computer and TV, you must disconnect WowMouse from one device and reconnect it to another. Once you try WowMouse, you can imagine how seamless Doublepoint's technology would be if it wasn't operating in someone else's walled garden.