At the end of August 2018, Google announced that Wear OS will undergo a complete redesign aimed at making everything more accessible. At the time, the search giant said that the update to Wear OS 2.1 that will bring these changes would begin rolling out in September and indeed the company has narrowly met that target, with the update having started rolling out last Friday.
In Wear OS 2.1, notifications will no longer occupy the entire display screen and like Android 9 Pie, gestures are the order of the day, where swiping left on the main screen brings up the Google Assistant while swiping the opposite direction brings up health data. You will also notice new shortcuts to the Play Store and Find My Phone as part of the tweaks to the Quick Settings menu.
Related: Google launches ‘Wear OS Phone’ app on the Play Store and adds ‘Quick Replies’ feature
The update to Wear OS 2.1 is staged, meaning only a few people have received it as of this writing. According to Google, the update should arrive on your supported watch “over the next month,” so you’ll have to be a little patient.
As for which devices will receive the update, Google says all that got the update to Android Wear 2.0 are in line for the Wear OS 2.1 update, meaning only a handful of first-gen models will be left out of this update.
Source: Google
