(Subscribe to our Today's Cache newsletter for a quick snapshot of top 5 tech stories. Click here to subscribe for free.)
Google first introduced tiles in 2019 to allows its Wear OS users to glance at data on weather, their workouts and other stats. Now, last Friday, the company said third-party developers can create custom tiles on Wear OS for smartwatches.
As of now, all tiles available to users in Wear OS is offered either by Google or the device’s manufacturer.
Google explained that tiles can be designed to track daily activity progress, kick-starting a workout, waking a recently played song, or sending a message to a favourite contact.
The idea behind tiles is to adhere to user’s immediate needs. If the user wants more information, they can tap the tile to open a related app on the watch or phone.
Google’s Jetpack Tiles Library, a feature for third-party developers is in alpha mode and will become available to users later this spring.
Google has been rolling out small updates here and there, but Wear OS has not received a new version in the past few years.
