Google’s Wear OS gets tiles

Google announced an interesting new Wear OS feature today that makes a number of highly used features more easily available. Google calls this feature ’tiles’ and it makes both information like the local weather forecast, headlines, your next calendar event, goals and your heart rate, as well as tools like the Wear OS built-in timer available with just a few swipes to the left.

In the most recent version of Wear OS, tiles also existed in some form, but the only available tile was Google Fit, which opened with a single swipe. Now, you’ll be able to swipe further and bring up these new tiles, too.

There is a default order to these tiles, but you’ll be able to customize them, too. All you have to do is touch and hold a given tile and then drag it to the left or right. Over time, Google will also add more tiles to this list.

The new tiles will start rolling out to all Wear OS smartwatches over the course of the next months. Some features may not be available on all devices, though (if your watch doesn’t have a heart rate monitor, you obviously won’t see that tile, for example).

Overall, this looks like a smart update to the Wear OS platform, which now features four clearly delineated quadrants. Swiping down brings up settings, swiping up brings up your notifications, swiping right brings up the Google Assistant and swiping left shows tiles. Using the left swipe only for Google Fit always felt oddly limited, but with this update, that decision makes more sense.