Latest Pixel Watch leak says you’ll need a whole new app for the smartwatch

The ‘Google Pixel Watch app’ has been spotted in an APK

The Google Pixel Watch is confirmed to land later this year, and a new slice of information suggests you won’t be using the standard Wear OS app on your phone to connect to the smartwatch. Instead, a new report suggests there will be a dedicated Google Pixel Watch app that you'll be asked to download from the Play Store. This was spotted by 9to5Google in an APK teardown of the Google Play Services beta version 22.22.

As ever with APK teardowns, this doesn’t confirm the app will see the light of day, but it does give us a good suggestion of what to expect. The report spotted an upcoming change to the Smart Lock features on Google devices, which is set to let Wear OS 3 smartwatches help you unlock your smartphone, tablet, or Chromebook. This feature was previously teased in January, and it seems the feature is still in development but is nearing release.

The beta also includes the mention of the Pixel Watch app. It says, “To set up your watch for Smart Unlock, connect it to your phone with the Google Pixel Watch app. Your watch and phone must be connected to use Smart Unlock.” That confirms you’ll need a secondary app to access some Pixel Watch features, and it may be that this is the specific service you’ll need to connect to the smartwatch. It’s currently unclear if you’ll also need the Wear OS app that most Android smartwatches traditionally connect to.

We don’t yet know how this app would work or if it'll have any benefits over the standard Wear OS app. It may also mean we don’t see any substantial updates to the existing Wear OS app during the release of the Pixel Watch itself. This seems similar to how Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 — the first smartwatch to run Wear OS 3 — works on smartphones.