Gemini is finally coming to Wear OS. Google’s announced that its AI chatbot is making its way to smartwatches from Google itself, Samsung, Oppo, OnePlus, and Xiaomi, bringing better natural language understanding and more flexible and helpful replies right to your wrist.

Google’s newest assistant has been available through both a mobile app and a desktop web interface since early last year, but has been notably absent from other platforms. The company announced in May that it was working to bring Gemini to more device types, and according to today’s announcement, it’s making good on part of that promise. Gemini is coming to Wear OS watches beginning today, including Pixel Watch and Galaxy Watch devices.

According to Google, Gemini on Wear OS will work the same as it does in existing Gemini interfaces. You can get answers to complicated questions (Google gives the example of asking how to roast sliced vegetables), take actions within apps (sending texts, creating playlists), and more. You can even get summaries of info within your apps, like emails and texts — a hallmark AI function that actually makes sense in the context of a smartwatch.

In April, we heard that Google was cooking up a new raise-to-speak gesture on Wear OS that would let you talk to your on-wrist assistant by simply raising your watch to your mouth and speaking. That feature isn’t part of this announcement; you’ll access Gemini on your watch by pressing and holding a button or saying Hey Google.

The Nest Audio speaker with its lights active, sitting on a small pile of books

Related


Gemini can’t come to Google’s smart speakers soon enough

If I hear one more ‘Sorry, I didn’t understand’…

Rollout starts today, continues ‘over the coming weeks’

A Pixel Watch showing a Google Gemini interface creating a playlist

Source: Google

I’m happy to see Gemini finally hitting wearables. The way you have to communicate with the legacy Google Assistant is much more specific and less natural than how you can talk to Gemini, and with the latter available on some devices but not others, it can be frustrating to have your watch answer your Hey Google commands answered differently in different contexts.

Google says that this update is starting today on Wear OS watches running Wear OS 4 or newer. It may be a while before you get Gemini on your own wrist, though: the rollout is set to progress “over the coming weeks.” ​​​​​​​