The search engine giant Google has a broad lineup of applications in its hood, which are available in both of its Operating Systems- Android and WearOS, where Android is for smartphone devices, and WearOS refers to smartwatches. In terms of WearOS presently has three generations, and the latest one is WearOS 3. Recently, Google announced upcoming policy changes for WearOS, so let’s take a look at them.
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Let us inform you Google is making these policy changes in order to improve the quality of WearOS applications. This update will also improve the discovery and presentation of WearOS apps in the Google Play Store. However, these new requirements will come to the devices from 31st August 2023. Before that, users can use the applications as per the existing policies.
As per the official blog post, all the WearOS applications should target Android version 11, API level 30. Notably, for better safety management and maintenance of quality standards, lower-level apps will be undiscoverable from the above Android version from the targeted API level device’s Google Play Store. The quality changes, which will appear after the decided time, are listed below.
Black Background- After the new quality update, you should use a black background for all the WearOS applications and tiles.
Ongoing Activity- While an ongoing activity, the user should-
- Show the ongoing activity indicator on the watch face.
- Update the apps for ongoing activity.
- Reference the ongoing activity on a tile.
Show Time- The user should display the time on top of the app home screen or any ongoing activity screen.
All these quality updates will help you get a consistent, intuitive, and enjoyable experience on Wear OS. The company is carefully planning to improve the WearOS app’s quality and discoverability with these updates.
