Late last year, Google launched Wear OS 2.0 — a huge overhaul for its wearable operating system that aimed to make Wear OS simpler and easier to use. A big part of Wear OS 2.0 focused on new swipe gestures, and with another update that's rolling out now, Google's slightly tweaking how these work with the introduction of Tiles.
Prior to this change, Wear OS consisted of four main swipes:
- Swipe up — Notifications
- Swipe down — Quick settings
- Swipe right — Google Assistant
- Swipe left — Google Fit
While most of that is staying the same, swiping left now takes you to Tiles. Rather than being limited to only seeing Google Fit data, Tiles now showcase shortcuts for checking the latest news headlines, seeing your fitness goal progress, upcoming calendar reminders, weather forecasts, and more.
Some of this sounds like overlap with the contextual Google Assistant page, but Tiles does go beyond Assistant-related info with the ability to quickly check your heart rate, start a workout, etc.
Google's rolling out Tiles to Wear OS "over the next month", with Google noting that "certain features will vary by phone OS, watch, or country." Google will be showcasing Tiles at Google I/O next week, so it won't be too long before we get to go hands-on with them.
Wear OS 2.0 review: Simplicity, speed, and Assistant's wearable redemption
Joe Maring was a Senior Editor for Android Central between 2017 and 2021. You can reach him on Twitter at @JoeMaring1.
