Google’s Wear OS is often referred to as neglected, and frankly, it’s an apt description when you hear stories like this. In recent months, the hotword ‘Hey Google’ has been broken on Wear OS.
Reports on Reddit and the Google Issue Tracker show that the “OK Google” and “Hey Google” hot words to activate Assistant did not work on Wear OS smartwatches. The problem apparently first appeared around November 2020 and has gone largely unnoticed since then, aside from the occasional Reddit thread. The people at Droid-Life found reports going back to June, and that’s a ‘yikes’ well deserved.
Assistant is one of the main selling points of Wear OS smartwatches as the only other wearables to officially support Google Assistant come from Fitbit, now owned by Google.
This issue doesn’t affect the ability to actually use Google Assistant on Wear OS, thankfully, but it just makes it a little more difficult to access. With no hotword support, you have to long press the power button on your watch to immediately activate the Assistant, or you have to use the touchscreen to activate it from the leftmost feed.
At this point, Google has not publicly acknowledged the problem or promised a solution.
This really does anything but inspire confidence in Google’s support for Wear OS, and the fact that it took someone so long to actually notice it only makes things worse. The company said the Fitbit purchase was in part to boost Wear OS as a platform, but ignoring a relatively core function of your operating system for the better part of a year is … not a good sign. At least Google Assistant works very well on Fitbit.
More about Wear OS:
FTC: We use automatic affiliate links that generate income. Lake.
Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news: