As expected, Android 17 has officially gone stable, and that includes Wear OS 7. The update is rolling out today to Pixel phones and Pixel Watch devices—expect Samsung Galaxy and other Android phones to start getting the update next month. Let’s take a look at what’s included.

Advanced multitasking with “Bubbles”

Bringing smarter app-windowing to Android

One of the most interesting new features in Android 17 is called “Bubbles.” Essentially, it brings apps into the existing messaging bubbles. When an app is “bubbled,” it floats on top of other apps. You can open and close it by simply tapping the app icon, which can be dragged around the screen.

The extra cool thing is you can bubble multiple apps together. They all appear as icons at the top of the floating window, allowing you to quickly switch between them. Bubbles are especially useful on larger screen devices, like foldables and tablets, but the feature is pretty nice on phones, too. I have a full hands-on with bubbles here.

Give apps a small crumb

Android has slowly gotten better and better about restricting apps’ access to your personal information. For a while now, we’ve been able to grant apps access to “precise” and “approximate” location. Sounds good in theory, but in reality, many apps refuse to work without “precise” location granted. Now, Android will let you grant temporary access to your precise location. In addition, you can share only specific contacts instead of your entire list, similar to how Android already worked for files and media access.

Live Updates on Wear OS

Glancable info on your glancable device

Live Updates rolled out last year with Android 16. These are special notifications that show real-time progress for things like food delivery orders, timers, and fitness tracking. Wear OS 7 supports Live Updates, making it even easier to track progress. They look essentially the same as they do on a phone, just condensed to the smaller screen.

Control devices from your watch

Your watch as a universal remote

Wear OS 7 includes some new features for controlling connected devices around you. Google specifically mentions this will work with intelligent eyewear that “launches this fall,” but it’s also for smart devices in your home.

For example, if you’re listening to music, you can choose where the audio is playing from the media player on your watch. Move the music from your Bluetooth headphones to your bedroom speaker or the living room TV with the output switcher. This seems genuinely pretty useful as a way to avoid voice commands.

Gemini Intelligence…coming soon

Some big features are missing

At Google I/O last month, the company talked about how Android is now an “intelligence system.” Unfortunately, some of the biggest “intelligence” announcements aren’t coming to Android 17 just yet. Google says Gemini Intelligence will arrive on “select advanced devices” later this summer.

Gemini Intelligence will allow for deeper integration with apps and services on your phone. The days of manually using apps to order food and buy tickets are coming to an end, or at least that’s Google’s hope. Gemini can already order food for you—expect a lot more of that this year.

One big feature that people are excited about is generative AI “Create My Widget.” The idea is you can literally just ask Gemini to create a widget with specific information, and it will happen. Then, that widget can be synced to your Wear OS watch as a Tile. Pretty nifty.

Anyway, there’s a bunch of other smaller things headed to Android 17. Check out the full landing page for all the details.

Source: Google, Google