Google’s Wear OS is often called neglected, and frankly, it’s an appropriate description when you hear such stories. Over the past few months, the “Hey Google” keyword on Wear OS has been broken.
Reports on Reddit and the Google Issue Tracker show that the “OK Google” and “Hey Google” words to activate Assistant did not work on Wear OS smartwatches. The issue apparently only appeared in November 2020 and has since passed mostly unnoticed, apart from the occasional Reddit thread. The people at Droid-Life found reports dating back to June that are a ‘yikes’ well deserved.
Assistant is one of the core selling points of Wear OS smartwatches, as the only other portable items that Google Assistant officially supports are from Fitbit, which is now owned by Google.
Fortunately, this issue does not affect the ability to use Google Assistant on Wear OS, but it does make it a little harder to access. Without hotword support, you have to long press the on / off button on your watch to activate Assistant immediately, or use the touch screen to activate it from the left input.
At this point, Google has not publicly acknowledged the issue or promised a solution.
In fact, it does everything but instill confidence in Google’s support for Wear OS, and the fact that it took so long for anyone to really take notice only makes matters worse. The company said that the acquisition of Fitbit was partly intended to promote Wear OS as a platform, but to omit a relatively important feature of your operating system for a better part of a year is … no good sign. At least Google Assistant works very well on Fitbit.
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