At the end of last week, Google announced a noteworthy change to Wear OS 6+ and its built-in weather app. In short, they said that the built-in weather would soon go away, but it’s also a bit confusing depending on your device. They have since pulled the news, so all of this is now slightly up-the-air.
Originally, the post went up on September 11, stating that there were “Changes to Google’s built-in Weather app on Wear OS 6+.” It say specifically that Google would “no longer offer Google’s built-in Weather app on Wear OS 6+ smartwatches,” mostly because watch brands typically offer their own weather apps and that there are plenty of choices on Google Play for users to install.
So how would that impact you and your smartwatch?
- The post said that for watches running Wear OS 6 and newer, you will be impacted. In other words, you will lose the built-in Weather app from Wear OS.
- If you have a watch running Wear OS 5 or earlier, nothing actually changes and you can just use the existing Weather app you have.
- If you have Pixel Watch on Wear OS 6 or newer, you will automatically be upgraded to the new Pixel Weather app.
- If you own watches from Samsung, OnePlus, or Mobvoi on Wear OS 6 or newer, the Wear OS Weather app will not be available for new installations. However, if you already had it installed before upgrading to Wear OS 6, it will remain.
Again, Google seems to have pulled this post, so we don’t know if they are sticking with this plan, changing things up, or backtracking because people were upset. We’ll see what we can find out. You can view an archived version of the post here.
- UPDATE: The second I posted this, Google re-posted the news and nothing in the text seems to have changed.