Get ready for Google News on your Wear OS smartwatch
TheGoogle Newsexperience is pretty polished on our Android smartphones, but the app has, so far, lacked a Wear OS version. As part of Google’s renewed commitment to Wear OS and the release of thePixel Watch, one might be in the making, though. New evidence shows that Google might be preparing a super-simplified version of a Google News feed that you’ll be able to read right from your watch.
As per a Reddit user who managed to access the Google News Play Store listing from their watch, Google has screenshots of what looks like a watch-optimized version of the app. Despite the fact that the app isn’t available for downloading on Wear OS just yet (searching “Google News” on the smartwatch version of the Play Store returns nothing), you can clearly see what looks like a tile for reading the news, as well as a very simplified version of the app’s news feed. There’s also the option to open news posts in full on your smartphone. The user accessed the listingusing a workaroundinvolving the Google Assistant’s app search function.
The UI of that app, from what screenshots show, looks very similar to the UI of other Wear OS 3 apps by Google, but it’s hard to know for how long those screenshots have been there sitting unnoticed. One of the screenshots shows a preview of an article by The Verge that was publishedover a year ago. That may mean this has been in development for a while.
We don’t know when or if the Google News app will become available on smartwatches, but if these screenshots show anything, it’s that Google is at least entertaining that notion.
Thanks: Mishaal
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