Adamya Sharma / Android Authority
TL;DR
Google appears to be working on new gestures for Pixel Watches.
We’ve found clear code evidence suggesting Google is developing double-pinch and wrist-turn gestures for its smartwatches.
Wrist gestures used to be a thing up until Wear OS 3, and Google’s version of double-pinch is identical to what Apple and Samsung offer on their respective watches.
Pixel Watch users have been asking for better gesture controls for years, and it looks like Google is finally answering their call. Ever since the Pixel Watch 4 introduced Raise to Talk for summoning Gemini, users, including yours truly, have hoped Google would expand its capabilities into more intuitive wrist and finger-based controls. After all, wrist gestures were a thing in the early Android Wear era before being quietly dropped them during the transition to Wear OS. Meanwhile, rivals like Samsung and Apple have offered gestures such as double-tap/double-pinch, fist tap, and more for years now. Well, it looks like the Pixel Watch will finally catch up to its competition real soon.
In the Pixel Watch app (v4.2.0.833802130), we’ve discovered clear code evidence suggesting that Google is preparing new double-pinch and wrist-turn gestures for Pixel Watches.
We’ve not yet managed to enable these gestures, and there’s no indication of which Pixel Watch models will support them. However, the code strings explicitly confirm what these gestures will do.
New Pixel Watch gestures
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Currently, the Pixel Watch 4 supports six gestures, including Raise to Talk, Tilt-to-Wake, Touch-to-wake, Rotate crown to wake, Touch & hold watch face to change, and Screenshot (by pressing the crown and side button at the same time). The code we’ve discovered shows that the first major addition to this list could be a brand-new double-pinch gesture. The strings describe it as a multipurpose tool to answer calls, interact with notifications, take photos, and more.
Double pinchUse double pinch to answer calls, interact with notifications, take photos and more
This sounds nearly identical to the gesture systems already available on Apple Watch and Samsung’s Galaxy Watches. It’s possible that double-pinch on the Pixel Watch will also enable music controls and other actions not listed in the code strings here.
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Meanwhile, Google also appears to be reviving wrist gestures. Longtime Android Wear users may recall that Google used to support wrist flicks and other wrist gestures up until Wear OS 3. In fact, Google still has an old support page available on how those gestures used to work on Wear devices. The newly added strings in the Pixel Watch app show how wrist gestures on the Pixel Watch, if and when they arrive, could allow users to silence calls and close alerting notifications with simple wrist turns.
Wrist turn Use wrist turn to silence calls, and close alerting notifications
Unfortunately, the code doesn’t reveal any additional information about these new Pixel Watch gestures or any others that might be in the works.
It’s also unclear whether these new double-pinch and wrist turn gestures will arrive in an upcoming Pixel Drop or with the next Wear OS update. And as we noted earlier, hardware compatibility is also unknown at the moment, so these might be limited to newer Pixel Watch models, or they might come to all Pixel Watches if it’s possible for Google to implement that.
Still, this is the clearest sign yet that Google is preparing a significant upgrade to gesture-based controls on its smartwatches. We’ll keep an eye on the development of these new gestures and get back to you when and if we learn more.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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