Search engine giant Google announced an update for its Wear OS platform by letting third-party developers create custom Tiles for the platform.
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The Tiles feature on the Wear OS, which Google introduced in 2019, gave users access to quick functionalities and information such as Goals, Weather, Heart rate, and more with just a swipe left. At the moment, developing Tiles is limited to only Google, however, that is about to change in the next update as Google is opening up the feature to third-party developers. With the Jetpack Tiles library for Wear OS, developers can start creating tiles for third-party apps on the wearables platform.
“Tiles can be designed for many use cases, like tracking the user’s daily activity progress, quick-starting a workout, starting a recently played song, or sending a message to a favorite contact,” Google said. “While apps can be immersive, Tiles are fast-loading and focus on the user’s immediate needs. If the user would like more information, Tiles can be tapped to open a related app on the watch or phone for a deeper experience.”
The Jetpack Tiles library is still in the alpha phase, but this phase is enough for developers to start building custom Tiles for Wear OS.
The update with the custom tiles should be released in spring 2021. However, an exact date has not yet been announced. It has been six months since the last update for Wear OS. So far it is also still unclear what other features the upcoming Wear OS version will bring with it. Maybe the Google developers will comment on this in the next few weeks.
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It has been reported that Samsung is working on a new wearable that runs Wear OS. If it is true, it will be the company’s first. Until now Samsung has been launching smartwatches with Tizen OS.
