Google is testing the Wear OS 7.1 update and it's now available in a canary emulator released for Android Studio. Discovered in the new build, Wear OS could get an Android-like Persistent Status Bar to permanently show vital system indicators.
Wear OS 7.1's persistent status bar will sit at the top of the display to show critical information. Currently, the test build uses a placeholder star icon, but it could soon gain the ability to display vital system indicators such as status indicators.
Additionally, Google aims to implement an Always-visible time across all apps and activities. It is designed to be unobtrusive and will hide when a user scrolls through a list. It will reappear after two seconds of idle time and will completely vanish during full-screen interactive prompts like time pickers or alert dialogues.
For developers building with the latest API level 35 and Compose tools, the status bar is handled automatically. While this preview is built on the Wear OS 7.1 emulator based on Android 17, Google notes that the feature isn't coming soon.
That's because the feature is strictly in early testing and could arrive much later down the line. And since this is a Wear OS 7.1 feature, it could expand to other Wear OS-based UI's like Samsung's One UI Watch.
For those unaware, the most recent Wear OS version is Wear OS 7, which is also built on Android 17. It inherited a host of features from Android 17, like Live Updates, Gemini Intelligence and Widgets. More information about its next update should be revealed as we inch closer to launch, so stay tuned.
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