Finnish startup Double point unveiled its free app, WowMouse, for the Apple Watch this week at CES 2025. The app uses the wearable’s sensors, compass and accelerometer to turn your hand into a mouse that can control devices through gestures.
The Apple Watch already uses similar technology for the double-tap feature that launched in 2023. The watch detects micro-movements on your wrist when you tap your thumb and index finger together and registers it as a click on your device.
Doublepoint does that too, but goes one step further. WowMouse lets you point your hand at your Mac and control the cursor on your computer screen using a companion app. The startup plans to expand to Bluetooth-enabled devices as well, allowing you to control smart lights with a single point.
Doublepoint’s chief technology officer, Jamin Hu, placed an Apple Watch on my right hand and asked me to point to a floor lamp across the room. I did and the bulb started to glow. I hit my thumb and forefinger together and the light went out, but when I turned my palm towards the ceiling, the light got brighter.
Usually I would have to take out my phone, open an app and turn on the smart lights in my house one by one. But with Doublepoint’s app, I could control my smart home devices with the wave of a hand. Hu notes that there will be an initial setup phase to show the app where the lights are in your home. But after that, WowMouse will be able to tell which devices you’re targeting.
The magic behind Doublepoint’s technology comes down to a deep neural network trained on a very large, custom gesture dataset. Everyone’s finger taps and gestures look a little different, but this large dataset allows Doublepoint’s underlying model to understand user intent.
Indeed, 100,000 people have already downloaded the WowMouse app on the Google Play Store, which Doublepoint introduced at last year’s CES. On Sunday, the company expanded to Apple’s App Store and has already attracted a few thousand users.
Big tech companies and hardware startups are making smart glasses that use voice as an interface, but these devices still need some kind of hand attachment. The Orion AR glasses introduced by Meta in September use an EMG wristband that allows users to scroll and click buttons while wearing the smart glasses.
Doublepoint CEO Ohto Pentikäinen says this technology could work with smart glasses in a similar way, but using the sensors already inside popular watches.
Doublepoint was founded in 2020 and originally made its own hardware. A few years ago, the company focused on building software that works with off-the-shelf smartwatches like those from Apple and Google. So far, Doublepoint has raised $6.5 million, partly from the Finnish government, and expects to close another round of funding in 2025.
Eventually, Doublepoint would like to license its technology to smartwatch makers. While the WowMouse app has garnered a devoted following, building an interface technology in someone else’s closed ecosystem can be limiting.
For example, if you want to use WowMouse to control your computer and TV, you’ll need to disconnect WowMouse from one device and reconnect it to another. After trying the WowMouse, you can imagine how seamless Doublepoint’s technology would be if it weren’t working in someone else’s walled garden.
