What you need to know
- Wear OS 7 adds Live Updates for deliveries, sports scores, and ride tracking directly on smartwatches.
- Gemini Intelligence on Wear OS 7 will let users automate tasks directly from their smartwatch.
- Wear OS 7 also brings a unified workout tracking system and promises up to 10% better battery life.
Alongside announcing a wave of Gemini-related updates and giving us our first proper look at Android XR smart glasses, Google also quietly unveiled Wear OS 7 at Google I/O. Wear OS updates over the past few years have mostly felt incremental, but Wear OS 7 is finally bringing a few genuinely useful upgrades to Android smartwatches.
One of the biggest additions is Wear Widgets. Google is moving beyond the older static Tiles system and introducing a more flexible widget experience for smartwatches. These widgets will support multiple layouts, including 2×1 and 2×2 card styles.
Another major upgrade coming with Wear OS 7 is Live Updates from Android. Similar to Android phones, these updates will surface persistent real-time information directly on your smartwatch for things like food deliveries, ride tracking, sports scores, and more. Google first introduced this concept on Android phones last year, and it’s now making its way to Wear OS.
Google is also bringing some Gemini Intelligence features to Wear OS 7. This includes task automation, meaning users will be able to trigger and automate certain tasks directly from their smartwatch. Google already offers similar capabilities on Pixel phones, like ordering food through DoorDash, and those kinds of actions are now coming to Wear OS devices as well.
And if you’ve ever felt that workout tracking on Wear OS watches feels inconsistent between apps, Google is finally trying to fix that, too. Wear OS 7 introduces a new Workout Track experience that third-party fitness apps can adopt instead of building their own systems.
This standardized experience includes things like heart rate tracking, media controls, and workout UI elements, which should make fitness tracking feel much more consistent across apps and devices.
There are also a few smaller upgrades, including the ability to choose media output devices directly from your smartwatch, along with battery improvements. Google says users can expect around 10% better battery life on average.
Google still hasn’t confirmed which smartwatches will receive Wear OS 7 first or exactly when the stable rollout will begin, but it’s safe to expect Samsung Galaxy Watches and Pixel Watches to be among the first in line. We’ll keep you updated once the rollout officially starts.
Android Central’s Take
Wear OS updates have felt pretty minor for the past few years, but Wear OS 7 actually looks exciting. Live Updates on the wrist and Gemini Intelligence sound genuinely useful, and I can’t wait for this rollout to begin.
