Wear OS 6 Developer Preview lets you try out Google's new Material 3 Expressive UI
TL;DR Google has released the first Wear OS 6 Developer Preview, allowing developers to test apps with its new theming system and UI changes.
This update, based on Android 16, introduces a Material 3 Expressive design with dynamic coloring from the watch face, plus new animations and smoother scrolling.
Wear OS 6 also promises up to 10% battery life improvement, space-efficient tiles, larger buttons, and provides updated developer tools.
Earlier this month, Google unveiled Wear OS 6, the latest version of its smartwatch platform. The company revealed its launch date and shared a sneak peek at its new design, but it didn't release any preview builds for us to try out on our own. Today at its Google I/O 2025 developer conference, the company released its first Wear OS 6 Developer Preview, giving developers a chance to test how their watch apps will look and behave under Wear OS' new theming system.
Wear OS 6 is based on Google's latest Android 16 release, and unlike past Wear OS releases, it brings a fresh coat of paint. Wear OS 6 is getting a UI overhaul based on Google's latest Material 3 Expressive design. The update will bring new animations, smoother transitions and scrolling, and most notably, a dynamic color theming system that's based on your current watch face.
Furthermore, Wear OS 6 also brings more space-efficient tiles thanks to a new 3-slot tile layout, larger and easier to tap buttons, UI elements that are more optimized for round displays, and improvements to the ambient display transition for watch faces.
Apart from UI changes, the Wear OS 6 update will also improve battery life, with Google stating that watches updating from Wear OS 5 to Wear OS 6 will see an up to 10% improvement in battery life. It also brings the improvements introduced with the Wear OS 5.1 update, such as Credential Manager support and richer media controls.
Ahead of Wear OS 6's launch date later this year, Google is releasing the first Developer Preview. Developers who want to test how their apps and tiles behave on the new version can download the Wear OS 6 emulator preview in Android Studio.
They can also take a look at Google's design guidance for Wear OS, its Figma design kits, and the latest Wear Compose Material 3 and ProtoLayout Material 3 libraries. These libraries enable support for Wear OS 6's new dynamic color theming system as well as make tiles align with the system font by default.
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