Tag Archives: wear

Get a glimpse of Wear 2.0’s upcoming standalone apps

Kacey Fahey, Marketing Programs Manager, Google Play

The upcoming Android Wear 2.0 experience will introduce standalone apps, expanding your potential reach to both Android and iOS audiences with Wear devices. Users will be able to search, install, and use apps without ever leaving their device. See how other developers are enhancing their user experience with standalone apps for messaging, travel & local, and health & fitness.

Glide

Having a watch app further simplifies video messaging with Glide. Using the Wear Complications API, Glide is now able to live broadcast directly from the watch face. By tapping contact shortcuts from the watch face, you can now launch directly into a conversation. This experience brings speed and intimacy to the world of messaging, making wrist-based communication more accessible and effortless.
Foursquare

Travelers around the world use Foursquare’s Android Wear app to discover hidden gems and be in the know about the best places to eat, drink and explore. With their upcoming 2.0 app, the team has a clean new canvas for rich notifications giving users an immersive experience with Foursquare content.

“The standalone nature of the Android Wear 2.0 app will offer a big boost in search performance and app responsiveness so you spend less time staring at the screen and more time exploring the world around you,” said Kyle Fowler, Software Engineer at Foursquare.
Lifesum

Lifesum helps users make better food choices, improve their exercise, and reach health goals. The upcoming 2.0 experience complements the existing Lifesum mobile app and as a standalone app, it will allow users to more easily track water and meals throughout the day.

“It's all about increasing access and being there for the user in a quick and simple way. We believe a simplified way of tracking meals and water will make it easier for our users on their journey of becoming healthier and happier,” said Joakim Hammer, Android Developer at Lifesum

Check out g.co/wearpreview for the latest builds and documentation about the recently released Android Wear Developer Preview 4.
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Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview 4: Authentication, In-App Billing, and more

Posted by Hoi Lam, Developer Advocate

A key part of Android Wear 2.0 is letting watch apps work as standalone apps, so users can respond to messages, track their fitness, and use their favorite apps, even when their phone isn't around. Developer Preview 4 includes a number of new APIs that will help you build more powerful standalone apps.

Seamless authentication

To make authentication a seamless experience for both Android phone and iPhone users, we have created new APIs for OAuth and added support for one-click Google Sign-in. With the OAuth API for Android Wear, users can tap a button on the watch that opens an authentication screen on the phone. Your watch app can then authenticate with your server side APIs directly. With Google Sign-In, it's even easier. All the user needs to do is select which account they want to authenticate with and they are done.

In-app billing

In addition to paid apps, we have added in-app billing support, to give you another way to monetize your Android Wear app or watch face. Users can authorize purchases quickly and easily on the watch through a 4-digit Google Account PIN. Whether it's new levels in a game or new styles on a watch face, if you can build it, users can buy it.

Cross-device promotion

What if your watch app doesn't work standalone? Or what if it offers a better user experience when both the watch and phone apps are installed? We've been listening carefully to your feedback, and we've added two new APIs (PlayStoreAvailability and RemoteIntent) to help you navigate users to the Play Store on a paired device so they can more easily install your app. Developers can also open custom URLs on the phone from the watch via the new RemoteIntent API; no phone app or data layer is required. 

// Check Play Store is available
int playStoreAvailabilityOnPhone =
    PlayStoreAvailability.getPlayStoreAvailabilityOnPhone(getApplicationContext());

if (playStoreAvailabilityOnPhone == PlayStoreAvailability.PLAY_STORE_ON_PHONE_AVAILABLE) {
    // To launch a web URL, setData to Uri.parse("https://g.co/wearpreview")
    Intent intent =
        new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW)
            .addCategory(Intent.CATEGORY_BROWSABLE)
            .setData(Uri.parse("market://details?id=com.google.android.wearable.app"));
    // mResultReceiver is optional; it can be null.
    RemoteIntent.startRemoteActivity(this, intent, mResultReceiver);
}

Swipe-to-dismiss is back

Many of you have given us the feedback that the swipe-to-dismiss gesture from Android Wear 1.0 is an intuitive time-saver. We agree, and have reverted back to the previous behavior with this developer preview release. To support swipe-to-dismiss in this release, we've made the following platform and API changes:

  • Activities now automatically support swipe-to-dismiss. Swiping an activity from left to right will result in it being dismissed and the app will navigate down the back stack.
  • New Fragment and View support. Developers can wrap the containing views of a Fragment or Views in general in the new SwipeDismissFrameLayout to implement custom actions such as going down the back stack when the user swipes rather than exiting the activity.
  • Hardware button now maps to "power" instead of "back" which means it can no longer be intercepted by apps.

Additional details are available under the behavior changes section of the Android Wear Preview site.

Compatibility with Android Wear 1.0 apps

Android Wear apps packaged using the legacy embedded app mechanism can now be delivered to Android Wear 2.0 watches. When a user installs a phone app that also contains an embedded Android Wear app, the user will be prompted to install the embedded app via a notification. If they choose not to install the embedded app at that moment, they can find it in the Play Store on Android Wear under a special section called "Apps you've used".

Despite support for the existing mechanism, there are significant benefits for apps that transition to the multi-APK delivery mechanism. Multi-APK allows the app to be searchable in the Play Store on Android Wear, to be eligible for merchandising on the homepage, and to be remotely installed from the web to the watch. As a result, we strongly recommend that developers move to multi-APK.

More additions in Developer Preview 4

  • Action and Navigation Drawers: An enhancement to peeking behavior allows the user to take action without scrolling all the way to the top or bottom of a list. Developers can further fine-tune drawer peeking behavior through new APIs, such as setShouldPeekOnScrollDown for the action drawer.
  • WearableRecyclerView: The curved layout is now opt-in, and with this, the WearableRecyclerView is now a drop-in replacement for RecyclerView.
  • Burn-in protection icon for complications: Complication data providers can now provide icons for use on screens susceptible to burn-in. These burn-in-safe icons are normally the outline of the icon in interactive mode. Previously, watch faces may have chosen not to display the icon at all in ambient mode to prevent screen burn-in.

Feedback welcome!

Thanks for all your terrific feedback on Android Wear 2.0. Check out g.co/wearpreview for the latest builds and documentation, keep the feedback coming by filing bugs or posting in our Android Wear Developers community, and stay tuned for Android Wear Developer Preview 5!

Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview 2

Posted by Hoi Lam, Android Wear Developer Advocate

At Google I/O 2016, we launched the Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview, which gives developers early access to the next major release of Android Wear. Since I/O, feedback from the developer community has helped us identify bugs and shape our product direction. Thank you!

Today, we are releasing the second developer preview with new functionalities and bug fixes. Prior to the consumer release, we plan to release additional updates, so please send us your feedback early and often. Please keep in mind that this preview is a work in progress, and is not yet intended for daily use.

What’s new?

  • Platform API 24 - We have incremented the Android Platform API version number to 24 to match Nougat. You can now update your Android Wear 2.0 Preview project’s compileSdkVersion to API 24, and we recommend that you also update targetSdkVersion to API 24.
  • Wearable Drawers Enhancements - We launched the wearable drawers as part of the Android Wear 2.0 Preview 1, along with UX guidelines on how to best integrate the navigation drawer and action drawer in your Android Wear app. In Preview 2, we have added additional support for wearable drawer peeking, to make it easier for users to access these drawers as they scroll. Other UI improvements include automatic peek view and navigation drawer closure and showing the first action in WearableActionDrawer’s peek view. For developers that want to make custom wearable drawers, we’ve added peek_view and drawer_content attributes to WearableDrawerView. And finally, navigation drawer contents can now be updated by calling notifyDataSetChanged.
  • Wrist Gestures: Since last year, users have been able to scroll through the notification stream via wrist gestures. We have now opened this system to developers to use within their applications. This helps improve single hand usage, for when your users need their other hand to hold onto their shopping or their kids. See the code sample below to get started with gestures in your app:
 public class MainActivity extends Activity {  
   ...    
   @Override /* KeyEvent.Callback */  
   public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent event) {  
     switch (keyCode) {  
       case KeyEvent.KEYCODE_NAVIGATE_NEXT:  
         Log.d(TAG, "Next");  
         break;  
       case KeyEvent.KEYCODE_NAVIGATE_PREVIOUS:  
         Log.d(TAG, "Previous");  
         break;  
     }  
     // If you did not handle, then let it be handled by the next possible element as deemed by  
     // Activity.  
     return super.onKeyDown(keyCode, event);  
   }  
 }

Get started and give us feedback!

The Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview includes an updated SDK with tools and system images for testing on the official Android emulator, the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE, and the Huawei Watch.

To get started, follow these steps:

  1. Take a video tour of the Android Wear 2.0 developer preview
  2. Update to Android Studio v2.1.1 or later
  3. Visit the Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview site for downloads and documentation
  4. Get the emulator system images through the SDK Manager or download the device system images from the developer preview downloads page
  5. Test your app with your supported device or emulator
  6. Give us feedback

We will update this developer preview over the next few months based on your feedback. The sooner we hear from you, the more we can include in the final release, so don't be shy!

Watch your language! 44 of them, actually.

More than 500 million people use Google Translate every month across web and mobile phones, translating more than 100 billion words every day around the globe. Now, we’re launching Google Translate on all Android Wear watches, too.

Translate is built into the latest Android Wear software update, so you can have bilingual conversations even if you don’t have Google Translate on your phone, or if you’re away from your phone but connected via Wi-Fi.

And it’s easy to use - just speak into your watch to see your conversation translated into any of 44 languages. Flip your wrist to show the translation to a friend. When they respond in their own language, flip your wrist back, and you’ll see in your language what they’ve just said. Google Translate will automatically recognize which of the two languages is being spoken, so once you tap to start the conversation, all you and your buddy need to do is keep talking naturally.
Google Translate covers 90 languages total (for text translation), and we are always working to expand the number of languages that work across various features.

Posted by Barak Turovsky, Product Lead, Google Translate and Nathan Beach, Product Manager, Android Wear