While Wear OS 4 was the big news yesterday, you can expect a handful of updates before then, especially related to Tiles.
Version 1.2 of the Jetpack Tiles library lets developers add animations to Tiles. There are two types in particular:
- Tween animations “create smooth transitions on changes to part of your layout,” like the goal/status ring often used by fitness apps
- Transition animations will “animate new or disappearing elements from the tile,” like when a weather forecast updates
Additionally, this new library lets Tiles that use platform data sources, such as heart rate, step count, or time, to update once per second.
An interesting related tidbit in this talk is how a Tile is “updated when they are visible or when they are one swipe away from the visible screen.” That might be useful for end users arranging Tiles.
This is controlled by the Wear OS system to prevent excessive updates, which can be harmful to battery performance.
Meanwhile, in addition to Gmail and Google Calendar for Wear OS coming later this year, you can expect new Tiles from Spotify that let you see and start recent podcast episodes, frequently played albums, and access the Spotify DJ. WhatsApp’s in-beta app also offers a pair of Tiles, with Peloton offering another to “track your workout streak.”
This comes as “Wear OS active devices have grown 5x” since the launch of Wear OS 3.
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