Four features that would make the Google Pixel Watch smarter

After wearing the Pixel Watch on our wrists for two months now, there are a few key ways that we believe Google’s first smartwatch could be smarter and fit better into the Pixel lineup.

Synced Bedtime Mode

One of my biggest personal complaints about the Pixel Watch ties into the way Bedtime Mode works. In the ideal, Bedtime Mode is meant to be a simple toggle to reduce the watch’s battery usage and disable all notifications so you can get a good night’s rest. All the while, the watch collects useful health metrics about your sleep to help Fitbit create a profile of your nighttime habits.

My problem with Bedtime Mode has nothing to do with this evening routine, but with the morning. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve entirely forgotten to take the Pixel Watch out of Bedtime Mode in the morning and gone multiple hours or even the full day with my watch’s smarts going unused.

The best solution here would be an option to have Bedtime Mode be synced between the Pixel Watch and a Pixel phone (or perhaps any other Android phone with a nighttime option). This would even let the Pixel Watch benefit from the Pixel phone’s ability to run Bedtime Mode on a time schedule or based on when you charge it at night.

Apple Watch has an expanded version of this idea, with an option to ensure an iPhone and its paired Apple Watch are always in the same “Focus” mode. Considering Google has already recently toyed with making changes to Do Not Disturb, it would be great to see the Pixel lineup pick up this same capability.

Charging notifications

One of the core complaints against the Pixel Watch, especially by comparison to the Galaxy Watch 5 and even Google’s own Fitbit trackers, is the short battery life. With typical use, the Pixel Watch is able to last roughly a day on a full charge, meaning you’ll want to find a way to add charging the wearable to your daily routine.

For some, that means giving the watch a quick boost in the evening to track sleep data overnight and in the morning to get through the day. Others, like myself, choose to charge the Pixel Watch to full once per day. In either case, some notifications related to charging would go a long way in making the watch smarter.

To ensure there’s enough power to track your health overnight, Google recommends charging the Pixel Watch to 30% or more before bed. It would be quite helpful if the watch could warn you ahead of your scheduled bedtime if the Pixel Watch doesn’t have enough charge to last the night. In fact, our APK Insight team found signs that Fitbit was preparing this exact feature months ago, but it oddly has not launched yet.

On the flip side, for those who only charge once a day, it would be supremely helpful if the Pixel Watch app could send a notification when the smartwatch is fully charged. Leaving it on the charger any longer than it needs is probably not wise, and Android is perfectly capable of seeing the Pixel Watch’s battery percentage via Bluetooth.

Now Playing

These last two suggestions are core Pixel phone features that we’d love to see arrive on the watch. Since the Pixel 3, Google’s phones have been able to ambiently listen to and identify music playing nearby, a feature called “Now Playing.”

Now Playing is a fantastic use of the always-on display of Pixel phones, answering a common question with little more than a glance at the lock screen. In a similar way, the Pixel Watch is meant to make your digital life a bit quicker and more manageable without always needing to pull out your phone.

We’d love to see some version of Now Playing arrive on the Pixel Watch to make music identification even quicker and easier. While a native, on-device version of Now Playing would likely be taxing on the watch battery — therefore unlikely to arrive anytime soon — it should be possible to simply mirror your phone’s results to the watch.

Done right, this could make the Pixel Watch a bit more delightful in everyday use, providing a little extra context on the world around you.

At A Glance

In a similar vein, the At A Glance widget is a hallmark of Pixel phones, visible on both the home and lock screens. Typically, At A Glance serves as a quick view of the date and weather, but this is contextually replaced with timely information from Google Calendar, Google Home, Gmail, and many more.

At A Glance would be a fantastic addition to the Pixel Watch, continuing its efforts to make information quickly and conveniently accessible. One way Google could introduce it is by creating a new At A Glance watch face, which would make the smart space even more prominent than it is on Pixel phones. Alternatively, the feature could make sense as a new Wear OS Tile, as this would allow you to keep your preferred choice of fashionable watch face.

Would you use any of these suggested features for the Pixel Watch? Do you have some ideas of your own? Let us know down in the comments.

More on Pixel Watch:

• Google’s Pixel Watch charger is finally back in stock
• Some of the best Pixel Watch accessories you should try [Video]
• There’s a ridiculously simple trick to immediately get Pixel Watch updates

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