Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google appears to be working to bring Gemini to Wear OS devices.
- Gemini will likely replace Assistant on smartwatches, taking over wake-word control.
- Google’s reference to “back and forth” interactions could even mean Gemini Live is involved.
With CES 2025 upon us, it’s easy to get distracted by all the flashy new gadgets launching, but tech companies haven’t forgotten about their existing offerings, either. We just took a look at one of the ways that Google could soon bring new functionality to Wear OS smartwatches by bringing them earthquake alerts, and now we’re already uncovering another.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
This time we’re looking at the new 16.0.5.sa.arm64 beta release of the Google app for Android, and inside it we find a spate of references to Gemini support on Wear OS:
Code
Just say “Hey Google” or press & hold the side button to talk to Gemini
Setup is done
Gemini
Hold down the side button to talk to Gemini
Image description for button press
Press & hold button
Easily talk back and forth to get more done with an assistant on your watch, reimagined with Google AI
Google Terms and the Gemini App Privacy Notice apply. Chats are reviewed and used to improve Google AI. Learn about your choices. Gemini can make mistakes, so double-check it. Info about your location is also stored with your Gemini Apps activity.
Meet Gemini, your personal AI assistant from Google
Turn on “Hey Google” on the next screen to use Gemini hands-free
Image description for voice match
Use your voice
First, wake up your watch by lifting and tilting your wrist or tapping the screen. Then, say “%1$s”.
Turn on “%1$s” for hands-free help
Your assistant will wait in standby mode to recognize when you say “%1$s”. This is clearly more than just a casual mention of Gemini, and based on the content of these text strings, it sure appears that Google is preparing to integrate Gemini with Wear OS as a replacement for Assistant, just as it’s been available as an option on Android phones. It even looks like we’ll be getting Gemini complete with wake word support.
The “talk back and forth” language we see Google use sounds like it could imply something like Gemini Live, although we haven’t been able to find any explicit references to the feature.
We were also able to extract the short animation you see above, which clearly depicts Gemini responding to voice input on a smartwatch.
None of this is particularly surprising to see, as Google’s only been pushing for Gemini to spread to more and more corners of its ecosystem, and smartwatches have been an obvious void. We’ll be excited to see what the company’s able to do here, as one of the bigger restrictions imposed by wearables has been how limited our input options are — and next-gen voice control could be a handy way to side-step many of those.
Right now, it’s difficult to say how far along Google’s work here might be, but we wouldn’t be surprised to hear something official during the first half of the year.
