Everything New in Wear OS 7 - Droid Life

Wear OS 7 has been announced, set to release to supported smartwatches later this year. Google claims that watches upgrading from Wear OS 6 to Wear OS 7 can expect up to 10% improvement in battery life, plus plenty of new features. Wear OS 7 Canary is now available today for developers via an emulator for app testing, but as users, there are many features to look forward to: Gemini Intelligence, Wear OS widgets, Live Updates, and much more. Wear OS Widgets: Tiles on Wear OS are evolving into widgets. The Android team notes that on the development side, the switch from tiles to widgets will be easy for developers. For users, widgets are designed to be “flexible and dynamic,” but of course, it’ll be up to 3rd-party developers to ensure their widgets are designed well. Gemini Intelligence: Later this year as part of a broader rollout, select watches set for launch will come with Gemini Intelligence, which will provide proactive and personalized help to users. Google detailed GI earlier this month, so catch up on what was announced here. Live Updates: Live Updates offer real-time, important information from apps running on your watch or connected mobile phone. These are glanceable updates, such as food orders or activities like that. Enhanced System Media Controls: There are two fantastic upgrades here. Google is bringing per-app media auto-launch controls, as well as audio routing with Remote Output Switcher. From your Wear OS 7 device, you can choose where your audio is being routed to, giving you more control over where you’re listening to your tunes from. With the per-app media auto-launch controls, users can now personalize their media auto-launch experience per-app directly from the System Media Controls on a watch. Watch Face Format version 5 (WFF5): WFF5 is designed make watch face building easier. It includes Enhanced Alignment Options, Auto-Size Enhancements, Blend Modes, Stroke Joins, Hierarchical settings. If you couldn’t tell already, the announcement is very much aimed at developers. Wear OS 7 arrives this year on supported devices.