Google is redesigning its smartwatch operating system — Wear OS — with the goal of placing a larger focus on smarter health coaching and crucial information access, the company announced Wednesday. The new version of the wearable platform has been reworked to allow for faster notification management, allowing users to browse and dismiss notifications in a more streamlined manner, in addition to providing them with the ability to act on any such messages more swiftly. The Mountain View, California-based technology juggernaut is planning to start the rollout of its OS revision “over the next month” and is expected to announce the official beginning of the deployment in September. The rollout will be gradual in nature and arrive in the form of a traditional over-the-air update. All smartwatches running the rebranded version of Android Wear should be eligible for the upgrade.
The new notification stream allows users to swipe up to browse through multiple messages and comes with native support for smart replies directly from the same shade. Additionally, swiping down on the home screen will now allow you to quickly access Find My Phone, Google Pay, and other frequently used Wear OS apps. Building on last week’s announcement of a major Google Fit revamp, The latest version of Wear OS features deeper integration with the company’s fitness tracking solution for mobile devices, allowing users to swipe left from the home screen in order to start a workout session or check the status of their activity goals.
The final major addition to the latest Wear OS build is more comprehensive Google Assistant support, with the firm’s artificial intelligence companion now being capable of proactively offering advice and personalized suggestions, should users choose to have that option enabled. As is the case with all other Google-made solutions powered by machine learning, this particular feature should become better the more you use it, especially if you’re a habit-driven person. Google Assistant can now also help users explore Wear OS, suggesting them to try functionalities they haven’t used before when it believes doing so could be useful. Refer to the gallery below to see a depiction of the upcoming Wear OS capabilities in action.
