Wear OS 4 to bring animated Tiles, native golf tracking to Galaxy Watches

Last week, Google announced Wear OS 4 during the Google I/O 2023 keynote event. It also released the first Wear OS 4 Developer Preview update that can be used in an emulator. It was revealed that Wear OS 4 brings a new watch face format, improved battery life, and Material You UI.

Now, more Wear OS 4 features have been found (via 9To5Google), including animated Tiles, native golf tracking, and more native apps.

Native golf tracking on Wear OS 4 is developed in collaboration with Samsung

The Health Services API offers developers data from the sensors, making it easier to create activity and health-tracking apps. With Wear OS 4, Google offers faster and more frequent heart rate data fetching and native golf tracking. Golf tracking includes the number of golf shots played by a user. On supported smartwatches, Wear OS 4 can fetch data such as the size of the golf swing. This feature has been developed in collaboration with Samsung.

Wear OS 4 will also allow third-party health-tracking apps to access health data from the smartwatch's sensor in the background. It means that apps can track the heart rate even when the user is not actively using it. Moreover, the Health Connect app, which Google and Samsung built, will be a native part of Android 14 instead of a standalone app. Users can access it from the Settings app on their phone running Android 14.

Health Connect will also allow users to share the maps of their workouts with other apps. For female users, it will be easier to log menstrual cycle data.

Animated Tiles and native Wear OS 4 apps

Tiles will offer better and smoother visuals with Wear OS 4. App developers can use new tween animations and transitions to certain UI elements on Tiles, making them appear visually pleasing. Tween animations are for UI elements and text that change, while transitions are for UI elements that appear or disappear, depending on the situation. Google is working with app developers, including Poleton, Spotify, and WhatsApp, to bring Tiles to their Wear OS apps.

The company is also bringing native Google Calendar and Gmail apps to Wear OS. You can create and edit calendar entries or check emails directly from your wrist. As we reported earlier, WhatsApp is bringing its native app to Wear OS, which is a huge win for Google and Samsung as WhatsApp doesn't have an app for the Apple Watch. Most of these features will come to the Galaxy Watch 4 (and newer Galaxy Watch models) with the One UI 5 Watch update.