Wear OS (also known simply as Wear and formerly Android Wear) is a version of

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

's Android

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

designed for

smartwatch A smartwatch is a wearable computer in the form of a watch; modern smartwatches provide a local touchscreen interface for daily use, while an associated smartphone app provides management and telemetry, such as long-term biomonitoring. While ea ...

es and other

wearables A wearable computer, also known as a body-borne computer, is a computing device worn on the body. The definition of 'wearable computer' may be narrow or broad, extending to smartphones or even ordinary wristwatches. Wearables may be for general ...

. By pairing with

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

s running Android version 6.0 "Marshmallow" or newer, or

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

version 10.0 or newer with limited support from Google's pairing application, Wear OS integrates

Google Assistant Google Assistant is a virtual assistant software application developed by Google that is primarily available on mobile and home automation devices. Based on artificial intelligence, Google Assistant can engage in two-way conversations, unlike t ...

technology and mobile notifications into a smartwatch form factor. Wear OS supports

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

NFC NFC may refer to: Psychology * Need for cognition, in psychology * Need for closure, social psychological term Sports * NFC Championship Game, the National Football Conference Championship Game * NCAA Football Championship (Philippines) * Nati ...

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

, 3G, and LTE connectivity, as well as a range of features and applications. Watch face styles include round, square and rectangular. Hardware manufacturing partners include Asus,

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

Fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

HTC HTC Corporation ( zh, t=宏達國際電子股份有限公司, s=宏达国际电子股份有限公司, p=Hóngdá Guójì Diànzǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī, first=t) or High Tech Computer Corporation, (literally ''Hongda International Electron ...

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

, LG,

MediaTek MediaTek Inc. () is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company that provides chips for wireless communications, high-definition television, handheld mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers, navigation systems, consumer multimedia pr ...

Imagination Technologies Imagination Technologies Limited is a British semiconductor and software design company owned by Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, a private equity fund based in Beijing that is ultimately owned by the Chinese government. With its global headquar ...

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...

New Balance New Balance Athletics, Inc. (NB), best known as simply New Balance, is one of the world's major sports footwear and apparel manufacturers. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, the multinational corporation was founded in 1906 as the New Balance Arch ...

Qualcomm Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...

Skagen Skagen () is Denmark's northernmost town, on the east coast of the Skagen Odde peninsula in the far north of Jutland, part of Frederikshavn Municipality in Nordjylland, north of Frederikshavn and northeast of Aalborg. The Port of Skagen is ...

Polar Polar may refer to: Geography Polar may refer to: * Geographical pole, either of two fixed points on the surface of a rotating body or planet, at 90 degrees from the equator, based on the axis around which a body rotates * Polar climate, the c ...

TAG Heuer TAG Heuer S.A. ( ) is a Swiss luxury watchmaker that designs, manufactures and markets watches and fashion accessories, as well as eyewear and mobile phones manufactured under license by other companies and carrying the TAG Heuer brand name. ...

Suunto Suunto Oy is a Finnish company that manufactures and markets sports watches, dive computers, compasses and precision instruments. Headquartered in Vantaa, Finland, Suunto employs more than 300 people worldwide, and its products are sold in over ...

, and

Mobvoi Mobvoi Information Technology Company Limited () is a technological company headquartered in Beijing, China that sells and develops consumer electronics and Chinese voice recognition, natural language processing, and vertical search technol ...

. In the first six months of availability, Canalys estimates that over 720,000 Android Wear smartwatches were shipped. , Wear OS had between 10 and 50 million application installations. Wear OS was estimated to account for 10% of the smartwatch market in 2015.

History and compatibility

The platform was announced on March 18, 2014, along with the release of a developer preview. At the same time, companies such as

, LG,

and Asus were announced as partners. On June 25, 2014, at

Google I/O Google I/O (or simply I/O) is an annual developer conference held by Google in Mountain View, California. "I/O" stands for Input/Output, as well as the slogan "Innovation in the Open". The event's format is similar to Google Developer Day. His ...

, the Samsung Gear Live and LG G Watch were launched, along with further details about Android Wear. The LG G Watch is the first Android Wear smartwatch to be released and shipped. Motorola's

Moto 360 Motorola Moto is a range of Android mobile devices manufactured by Motorola Mobility, a subsidiary of Lenovo. The Moto brand is also used and marketed for certain public-safety products from Motorola Solutions and by Motorola brand licensees on ce ...

was released on September 5, 2014. On December 10, 2014, an update started to roll out, adding new features including a watch face API and changed the software to be based on Android 5.0 "Lollipop". The

LG G Watch The LG G Watch (model W100, codenamed Dory) is an Android Wear-based smartwatch announced and released by LG and Google on June 25, 2014. It was released along with the Samsung Gear Live as launch devices for Android Wear, a modified version of ...

and

Samsung Gear Live The Samsung Gear Live is an Android Wear-based smartwatch announced and released by Samsung and Google on June 25, 2014. It was released along with the LG G Watch as launch devices for Android Wear, a modified version of Android designed specifica ...

started shipping in July 2014, while the Motorola Moto 360, began shipping in September 2014. The next batch of Android Wear devices, which arrived at the end of 2014, included the Asus ZenWatch, the Sony SmartWatch 3, and the

LG G Watch R The LG G Watch R (model W110) is an Android Wear-based smartwatch announced and released by LG and Google on October 25, 2014.

. , the latest Wear OS devices are the

LG Watch Urbane The LG Watch Urbane is a smartwatch released by LG Corporation on April 27, 2015. There are gold and silver models, each with a 22mm-wide interchangeable strap. The watch has IP67 dust and water resistance. The LG Watch Urbane was equipped wit ...

, and the Huawei Watch. On August 31, 2015, Google launched a Wear OS app for

IOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

version 8.2 or newer, allowing limited support for receiving iOS notifications on smartwatches running Wear OS. , only the LG Watch Urbane and Huawei Watch are supported, but Google announced support for more smartwatch models. In March 2018, Android Wear was rebranded as Wear OS. It was stated that the renaming "better reflects our technology, vision, and most important of all — the people who wear our watches." In September 2018, Google announced Wear OS 2.0, which made the personalized Google feed (replacing

Google Now Google Now was a feature of Google Search of the Google app for Android and iOS. Google Now proactively delivered information to users to predict (based on search habits and other factors) information they may need in the form of informational ...

) and new fitness tracking platform

Google Fit Google Fit is a health-tracking platform developed by Google for the Android operating system, Wear OS and Apple Inc.'s iOS. It is a single set of APIs that blends data from multiple apps and devices. Google Fit uses sensors in a user's act ...

accessible from the watch face, and redesigned the notification area to use a scrolling pane rather than pages, and support automatically-generated smart replies (as on

Android Pie Android Pie ( codenamed Android P during development), also known as Android 9 (API 28) is the ninth major release and the 16th version of the Android mobile operating system. It was first released as a developer preview on March 7, 2018, and ...

). In November 2018, the underlying platform of Wear OS was upgraded to a version of Android Pie. In January 2021, Google completed its acquisition of wearables manufacturer

Fitbit Fitbit (stylized as fitbit) is an American consumer electronics and fitness company. It produces wireless-enabled wearable technology, physical fitness monitors and activity trackers such as smartwatches, pedometers and monitors for heart rate, ...

; upon its announcement of the purchase in November 2019, Google's head of hardware Rick Osterloh stated that it would be "an opportunity to invest even more in Wear OS as well as introduce Made by Google wearable devices into the market." Galaxy Watch

In May 2021 at Google I/O, Google announced a major update to the platform, internally known as Wear OS 3.0. It incorporates a new visual design inspired by

Android 12 Android 12 is the twelfth major release and 19th version of Android, the mobile operating system developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google. The first beta was released on May 18, 2021. Android 12 was released publicly on October 4 ...

, and Fitbit exercise tracking features. Google also announced a partnership with

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational corporation, multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of ...

, who is collaborating with Google to unify its

Tizen Tizen () is a Linux-based mobile operating system backed by the Linux Foundation, mainly developed and used primarily by Samsung Electronics. The project was originally conceived as an HTML5-based platform for mobile devices to succeed MeeGo. Sa ...

-based smartwatch platform with Wear OS, and has committed to using Wear OS on its future smartwatch products. The underlying codebase was also upgraded to

Android 11 Android 11 is the eleventh major release and 18th version of Android, the mobile operating system developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google. It was released on September 8, 2020. The first phone launched in Europe with Android 11 ...

. Wear OS 3.0 will be available to Wear OS devices running Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100

system on chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...

, and will be an opt-in upgrade requiring a factory reset to install.

Features

Wear OS can synchronize notifications from a paired device, and supports voice control with the "OK Google" hotword along with gesture-based input. Wear OS integrates with Google services such as the

and

Google Mobile Services Google Mobile Services (GMS) is a collection of proprietary applications and application programming interfaces (APIs) services from Google that are typically pre-installed on Android devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs. GMS ...

(including

Gmail Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP an ...

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

, and

Google Wallet Google Wallet (or simply Wallet) is a digital wallet platform developed by Google. It is available for the Android, Wear OS, and Fitbit OS operating systems, and was announced on May 11, 2022, at the 2022 Google I/O keynote. It began rollin ...

), as well as third-party watch apps from

Play Store Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating syst ...

. From the watch face, the user can swipe up to access their notifications, down to access a quick settings panel, from the left to view their personalized Google feed, and the right to view

. Via Google Fit and similar applications, Wear OS supports ride and run tracking, and devices containing heart rate sensors can perform a reading on-demand, or at intervals throughout the day. The watch can control media being played on streamed on paired devices.

Version history

Android Wear

Wear OS

References

External links

* * {{Smartwatch

Wear Wear is the damaging, gradual removal or deformation of material at solid surfaces. Causes of wear can be mechanical (e.g., erosion) or chemical (e.g., corrosion). The study of wear and related processes is referred to as tribology. Wear in m ...

Google operating systems Google services IOS software Products introduced in 2014 Smartwatches Wearable computers