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Google Releases Wear OS 6 Developer Preview With All That Material 3 Expressive Goodness
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Summary
- Google announced Material 3 Expressive for Android, focusing on bigger buttons and flashier colors.
- Wear OS smartwatches to get Material 3 Expressive later this year, with a projected 10% battery life improvement.
- Google today is releasing Wear OS 6 Developer Preview with emulator and design assets to help adapt to Material 3 Expressive.
Google I/O 2025 kicked off today with multiple announcements on the future of Android. One of the most notable ones is the announcement of Material 3 Expressive — Google’s name for its upcoming user experience design language.
We learned about Material 3 Expressive last week at the pre-show. It takes Material UI up to 11 with bigger buttons, flashier colors, and fun animations. It was later confirmed that Wear OS smartwatches will get a taste of Material 3 Expressive too, later this year.
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In order to bring Material 3 Expressive goodness to smartwatches in time, Google has now made Wear OS 6 Developer Preview available. Google always releases developer previews of new software builds months in advance to enable developers and apps to be ready for eventual wider availability.
The biggest design overhaul Wear OS has ever seen
Since it is a big design and experience overhaul, this will give developers time to perfect the visual and interactive elements. The redesign also includes dynamic color themes (based on the chosen watch face) and reworked interfaces. More elements will adapt to the round screen of Wear OS smartwatches with changing sizes and shapes. Google also claims a 10% improvement in battery life over Wear OS 5, thanks to platform optimizations.
Source: Google
To help developers embrace Material 3 Expressive on Wear OS 6, a new emulator is now available in Android Studio. Design guidance and corresponding Figma assets have also been made available. Two new Jetpack libraries were released, viz., Wear Compose Material 3 for apps, and Wear ProtoLayout Material 3 for tiles. They include implementations for the components that adhere to the new design language, including updated color schemes, typography, and shapes.
Source: Google
In a time when the smartwatch market has slowed down, Google’s attempt at breathing new life into wearables with Wear OS 6 is understandable. By improving the battery life and bringing the interface closer to what Android smartphones offer, it is trying to compete with Apple’s watchOS. We expect to see Material 3 Expressive be publicly available on Pixel watches first, followed by smartwatches from other OEMs such as Samsung and OnePlus.
