After launching the Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview way back at I/O, Google is now rolling out an update to that preview.
Google has announced that it’s now pushing Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview 2. The update includes a few new features, including enabling developers to use the wrist gestures feature that currently lets users scroll through their notifications. This will let you flick your wrist to scroll through third-party apps and navigate with one hand.
Google full list of changes for Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview 2 looks like this:
- Platform API 24 - We have incremented the Android Platform API version number to 24 to match Nougat. You can now update your Android Wear 2.0 Preview project’s compileSdkVersion to API 24, and we recommend that you also update targetSdkVersion to API 24.
- Wearable Drawers Enhancements - We launched the wearable drawers as part of the Android Wear 2.0 Preview 1, along with UX guidelines on how to best integrate the navigation drawer and action drawer in your Android Wear app. In Preview 2, we have added additional support for wearable drawer peeking, to make it easier for users to access these drawers as they scroll. Other UI improvements include automatic peek view and navigation drawer closure and showing the first action in WearableActionDrawer’s peek view. For developers that want to make custom wearable drawers, we’ve added peek_view and drawer_content attributes to WearableDrawerView. And finally, navigation drawer contents can now be updated by calling notifyDataSetChanged.
- Wrist Gestures: Since last year, users have been able to scroll through the notification stream via wrist gestures. We have now opened this system to developers to use within their applications. This helps improve single hand usage, for when your users need their other hand to hold onto their shopping or their kids.
If you’re a developer or just a brave soul that’s testing Android Wear 2.0, you can grab the Developer Preview 2 update now. If you don’t feel like running a beta update on your smartwatch — and really, no one would blame you if you didn’t — you’ll have to wait until Android Wear 2.0’s public rollout this fall to get the update.