Summary
- Google expands smart home controls on Wear OS with new Google Home Favorites tile and device complications.
- The Favorites tile displays the first five favorite smart home devices with a shortcut to their control page.
- New Google Home Device Shortcut complication provides quick access to your favorite smart home device from the watch face.
With the June 2024 Feature Drop, Google expanded smart home controls on Wear OS by adding a new Google Home Favorites tile and device complications. While the improvements were announced in late May, Wear OS users are still awaiting the new Google Home tile and complications to appear on their watches. Over a month later, Google seems to be finally rolling out the new Favorites tile and device complications for the best Android smartwatches.
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9to5Google reports a “What’s new” splash screen should appear when you open the Google Home app on your Wear OS watch, highlighting the new additions. The new Favorites tile will display the first five smart home devices you have marked as favorites in the Google Home app. They will be denoted by their respective icons, tapping on which will open their page in the Google Home Wear OS app.
Sadly, you cannot directly control the smart home device from the tile; instead, it just acts as a shortcut. An Open shortcut at the bottom of the tile will directly take you to the Favorites section in Google Home’s Wear OS app, listing all smart home devices you have marked as favorites.
The new Favorites tile for Wear OS comes a month after Google added a Favorites widget to the Google Home Android app in its public preview program.
New Google Home Device Shortcut complication also rolling out
Additionally, a new Google Home Wear OS complication will provide quick access to one of your favorite smart home devices from the watch face. Add the Device Shortcut complication to a watch face. If you have multiple homes, you must select one of them, followed by the smart home device you want quick access control to. Whatever device you choose, its icon will appear in the complication for easy identification.
Tapping on the complication will take you to the device control page. The new complication and tiles are rolling out as a server-side push from Google, but make sure you have the latest Google Home Wear OS app installed. You can restart your watch to see if that helps trigger the server-side update.
Do note that, unlike the Google Home Android app, the Wear OS app shows limited device control options. Google has made improvements on this front, with the Wear OS app recently gaining deeper device control options. Still, you might not see all the controls for your favorite devices on your Wear OS smartwatch, especially for security cameras.