Material Youis Google’s unified design language, which it uses across all its products and services, including Android, Chrome, and Gmail. The company’s smartwatch OS is the only exception, with Wear OS not having any Material You integration. Google was spotted working onbringing Material You to its smartwatches with Wear OS 4, but that has not happened yet. However, this does not mean Material You won’t come to Google’s smartwatches. It’s just a matter of time before that happens, and it appears Google is preparing to add a splash of Dynamic theming to the Pixel Watch UI.
9to5Googlespotted blue icons on the Pixel Watch 2’s Quick Settings UI instead of the usual white. Blue is the default color Google uses in apps that don’t support Dynamic Color. The same blue shade is also visible in theClear allbutton in the notification shade and the heart rate tile. Some Pixel Watch users running the latest Wear OS System UI (v1.7.37.x) are seeing the blue UI elements, though not all.
Source:9to5Google
It is also possible that the Wear OS System UI did not update the Resource Runtime Overlays after being updated, leading to the system elements turning blue.
There’s little clarity on why Google has not yet rolled out Dynamic theming toWear OS 4. After all, the OS is based onAndroid 13, while Material You has been a part of AOSP since Android 12. It’s possible that Dynamic theming on Wear OS 4 might be limited and may not exactly work as it does on your phone.
TheWear Watchface APIallows watch faces to expose their colors to the system, enabling the OS to use them for UI elements. So, whenever Dynamic theming goes live in Wear OS 4, it should pull colors from the watch face. However, this might be limited to working with watch faces designed using the new Watch Face Format.
It would have been cool to see the OS using colors from the paired phone’s wallpaper for the UI elements. But this would require deep integration between the watch and the phone, making it unlikely to happen.
Google recently announced the December 2023 Pixel Feature Drop with several new features and changes for its Pixel phones and watches. Its official announcement does not talk about dynamic color theming, so the feature is unlikely to roll out with the upcoming December update for the Pixel Watch. Maybe Google will release it with the March 2024 Feature Drop.
Even if Google rolls out Dynamic theming to Wear OS 4, it is unlikely to come to the Samsung Galaxy Watch lineup because they have One UI Watch running on top of Wear OS 4. The remaining Android watches are still on Wear OS 3.5, and there’s no clarity on when — if at all — they will get the Wear OS 4 update.
