Gadget swiping is one of the easiest and most intuitive gestures in the touchscreen armory, especially when the user has limited space. Google knows this and has introduced the swipeable Tiles for Wear OS back in 2019 as a way to offer information, such as the weather or a user's fitness info, on a quick-access interface.
The Tiles users can add to their smartwatches are pretty limited, though, and all of them are first-party offerings from Google or from their device's manufacturer. That's bound to change in the near future, because the tech giant has announced that the Jetpack Tiles library, which third-party developers can use to create custom Wear OS Tiles, is in alpha.
There are six Tiles in the new set: Goals, Next Event, Weather Forecast, Heart Rate, Headlines and Timer. Users can access them with a simple swipe left to see at-a-glance information about the latest news, how much is left on their timer, exactly how stressed they are, and so on. Before, swiping left and right would bring up Fit and Assistant respectively, but Google has slightly changed things in order to make way for its new information-rich Tiles.
The fate of Google's Wear OS has been hanging in the balance for a while now. It hasn't gotten a new version in years, and some believe that the tech giant's Fitbit acquisition could spell death for the platform.
Regardless, Wear OS is still around, and Google has been rolling out small updates for it. Back in November, for instance, it added three new Tile options for those who want a shortcut to recent workouts, to weather information and to guided breathing sessions. The company says it will also roll out an update this spring that would give users access to any third-party Tiles that gets developed for the OS.
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