Google’s Wear OS developer preview gets dark UI, lots of battery savings

Enlarge (credit: Wear OS by Google)

Android Wear showed a bit of life a few weeks ago when it was rebranded to "Wear OS by Google," and today it's getting a new Developer Preview based on Android P. Besides the upgrade to a newer version of Android, there are a few new features outlined in Google's blog post.

First, Google is switching to a default "Dark UI system theme." While Android Wear 1.0 sported Google's usual white background with black text, Android Wear 2.0 did a good job of making everything pretty dark. This change will probably clean up some odds and ends that still had a white background.

Background activity for apps is being limited almost completely. Google flatly states that "apps will no longer be allowed to run in the background unless the watch is on the charger," and it tells developers to "remove background services" from their apps. It's hard to come up with an example of a "background" functionality for an Android Wear app. Push notifications should be unaffected, and apps like fitness trackers or music players that generate an ongoing notification don't count as "background" apps. There's an exemption for watch faces and add-in complications, too.

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