Material You on Wear OS 4 will make your watch more colorful [Gallery]

Google is getting ready to launch Wear OS 4 this fall, and one of the crucial important additions is Material You, which makes your smartwatch more colorful to match your present watch face.

Wear OS has been seeing speedy enhancements lately, starting with the launch of model 3. Samsung has been a significant component on this shift, as the favored Galaxy Watch collection moved from working Samsung’s Tizen to utilizing Google’s Wear OS.

Where beforehand the one main distinction between watches was within the {hardware} and watch faces – with Google requiring a standardized UI – now OEMs are capable of be more expressive in wearable software program design. Watchmakers are additionally capable of go away behind Google’s generic “Wear OS” telephone app to offer a bespoke and branded expertise.

Of course, all watches begin from the identical baseline (Android-powered) Wear OS software program that Google offers. That being the case, to assist watchmakers and builders prepare for this fall’s Wear OS 4 launch, Google has supplied an early preview of the replace, out there within the Android Studio emulator.

However, Google didn’t share a lot concerning the sensible enhancements of Wear OS 4 when it was unveiled earlier this month. We know that the improve will bump watches from Android 11 to Android 13, and Google talked briefly about battery and text-to-speech enhancements. The firm additionally unveiled a brand new standardized “Watch Face Format” that ought to make new designs more standardized and environment friendly.

Our APK Insight crew took a more in-depth take a look at the preview software program and located that Google has at the least one main design change deliberate for Wear OS 4 – Material You. We managed to forcibly allow a brand new “Enable dynamic theme” toggle within the Settings app, which, as you may count on, utilized Material You’s signature shade scheme to many components of the smartwatch expertise.

The most outstanding shift in colours might be discovered within the Quick Settings space, with every out there toggle being tinted to enhance your present watch face shade. For instance, the “Honey” shade of yellow ends in golden brown accents, whereas “Lavender” brings a boldly pink tint.

Notably, when utilizing a watch face from the Play Store, Wear OS 4 defaults again to a shade of blue. It’s attainable this will be addressed for watches that use the standardized Watch Face Format, however we have been unable to check that concept.

You’ll additionally discover these new colours utilized in a number of different locations, such because the Settings app, however most cases we’ve seen have been refined accent colours slightly than something overt. It appears that Wear OS 4’s dynamic theme colours can also be out there to app builders, as components of the Google Play Store have been additionally recolored to match the watch face.

In all, the introduction of Material You dynamic colours to Wear OS 4 is much from groundbreaking, but it surely’s nice to see Google provide a way of consistency between one’s telephone and smartwatch. Plus, contemplating vogue is a big a part of sporting a smartwatch, having your watch face’s shade seem all through the expertise is a refined however significant contact.

What do you consider what we’ve seen of Wear OS 4 up to now? What shade would you need your Material You theme to be? Let us know within the feedback.

Dylan Roussel contributed to this text.