Wear OS 4 is rolling out for the first-generation Pixel Watch!

The Wear OS 4 upgrade based on Android 13 is rolling out starting today for the Pixel Watch. The build ID is TWD4.2301005.002 and it brings the October 2023 security patches.

What’s new in Wear OS 4 for the Pixel Watch:

The October 2023 software update includes a Wear OS 4 upgrade along with its features, personal safety experiences, numerous bug fixes, battery improvements and performance updates for Pixel Watch users.

Watch transfer

When you upgrade your Pixel phone, you can now easily transfer your Pixel Watch to your new phone without having to factory reset it. Your devices will be synced and ready to go.

Backup and restore

Backup and restore helps you securely backup your data and settings from your old Pixel Watch so you can easily switch to a new Pixel Watch while keeping all of your data, settings and watch faces in place.

Google Calendar app

The new Google Calendar app will be preinstalled on your Pixel Watch with this update. You can get event and task notifications, view 30 days of your schedule, easily navigate to event locations right from your wrist, and even mark tasks as complete. Plus, you’ll have more ways to access your calendar, from a tile or complication, to keep important info in plain sight.

Safety Features

With your upgrade to Wear OS 4, you’ll get access to the latest and greatest in Safety – Safety Check, Emergency Sharing, and Emergency Info on your Pixel Watch 1! Keep your most important medical info easily accessible on your wrist or sent to participating emergency services(2) in the event of an emergency with Medical ID Info. Have peace of mind when you’re walking home alone at night, on an early morning run, or in any other situation where you need a little safety net, with Safety Check and Emergency Sharing.

Accessibility & customization

New and improved customization capabilities, like a new text-to-speech engine supporting a faster, a more reliable TalkBack experience on your watch, bold text, new and improved magnification, and audio balance to adjust intensity of sound between right and left audio channels.

Enhanced notifications

Notifications come with smart link recognition of phone numbers and addresses, allowing you to tap to call, message, or get directions. Embedded media previews let you quickly view images and GIFs without leaving the notification shade. These enriched alerts provide more information upfront so you can take action faster.

Google Wallet is finally rolling out generic Pass photo import, letting you create a pass using a photo or screenshot of a barcode or QR code!

This was announced as part of the September 2023 Android Feature Drop, but I'm only now seeing the "Photo" option in Google Wallet.

The Pixel 8 series are the first Android phones to enable the Linux kernel's MGLRU feature by default!

MGLRU, which is short for multi-generational least recently used, improves Linux's page reclaim strategy. Google's benchmarks have shown that with MGLRU enabled, overall app launch times improve, there are fewer overall process kills, kswapd CPU use decreases, and more.

MGLRU is enabled by default for all Android 14 kernels (android14-5.15 and android14-6.1). The Pixel 8 series kernel is based on the android14-5.15 GKI. Upcoming flagships with next-gen Qualcomm and MediaTek chipsets should also have this feature enabled by default.

You can check if your device's kernel is compiled with MGLRU support (and whether it's enabled) with this command:

adb shell "cat /proc/config.gz | gunzip | grep 'CONFIG_LRU_GEN'"

CONFIG_LRU_GEN=y means it's available but not enabled

CONFIG_LRU_GEN_ENABLED=y means it's enabled

(Thanks to never_released on Twitter for the tip!)

For more details on MGLRU, check out this earlier thread.

You can now add a digital driver's license to Google Wallet if you're in Arizona, Colorado, or Georgia, joining Maryland which added support for this back in June!

H/T xeno_x19 on Twitter

Google Play Protect is adding real-time scanning for app installs!

Starting today, Play Protect will prompt users to perform a real-time, code-level scan when users install an app that has never been analyzed before by Google.

This scanning will extract important signals from the app and send them to the Play Protect backend for a code-level evaluation. Once the real-time analysis is done, users will get a result letting them know if the app looks safe to install or is potentially harmful.

Real-time app scanning will help combat malicious polymorphic apps that change their identifiable features to avoid detection. According to Google, Play Protect currently conducts real-time checks to warn users when it identifies an app known to be malicious from previous scans or was identified as potentially harmful from Google's "on-device machine learning, similarity comparisons, and other techniques that [they] are always evolving."

This is starting to roll out to all Android devices with Google Play Services in India first but will expand to all regions "in the coming months." According to the Google System Updates changelog, this feature is available as part of Google Play Store version 37.5.

Wear OS 4 makes it much easier to take screenshots!

Instead of opening the companion app, tapping the overflow menu, and then selecting "take screenshot on watch", you can now just press the crown and recent menu button on the watch simultaneously to trigger the "ready to send watch screenshot" notification on your phone.

This screenshot combination was first reported by 9to5Google, but Nail Sadykov brought up that this also works on the first-gen Pixel Watch after updating to Wear OS 4.

Gboard is making it easier to change your emoji's skin tone and gender. This is rolling out in the Gboard app for Android today.

CORRECTION: As @Freak07 points out, MGLRU is not yet enabled on the Pixel 8 series. It's...a bit odd/complicated, but if you're interested in the full explanation, see this post.

The At A Glance widget's new "At a Store" features surfaces "shopping lists and Google Pay rewards cards when you're in supported stores."

This new "At a Store" suggestion is part of the latest update to the Android System Intelligence app, version U.11.playstore.pixel8.570642812 (which is rolling out right now to the Pixel 8 series, hence the "pixel8" in the version name).

(Above screenshot by 9to5Google.)

Separately, we're still waiting on the Quick Access Wallet page to roll out support for showing location-based suggestions for loyalty cards. This relies on a new API in Android 14. The SystemUI flag ENABLE_WALLET_CONTEXTUAL_LOYALTY_CARDS controlling the feature is enabled by default in the Android 14 QPR1 beta, but the PackageManager flag declaring support for it (android.software.wallet_location_based_suggestions) is currently false on the Pixel 8 series running the QPR beta (though it's true on the stable release of Android 14.)

The FCC has permitted "very low power device operations in [the] 6GHz band", which the Google Pixel account on Twitter praised as "a win for Pixel users and American consumers, as this band will now be available for high-speed peer-to-peer WiFi communication."

6GHz P2P WiFi should allow for things like even faster device-to-device transfers (those of you who set up the Pixel 8 will have noticed they really discourage wired D2D transfers) and screen mirroring (though The Wi-Fi Alliance doesn't certify Miracast operation in 6GHz it seems, plus Pixel doesn't even support Miracast).