Smartwatches do a lot more than just tell the time, but at times that really basic feature goes away once you ask your wearable to do something else. With Wear OS 8, it looks like Google is trying something different, which it calls a “status bar” that stays at the top of a wearable’s screen for most of the time, regardless of which app it’s currently running.
The internet search giant noted on its Android Developers page that this is now also available for early preview testing in the Wear OS 7.1 Beta Preview Emulator. With the small screen size on smartwatches, the status bar shows only two things. One is the time, with “a uniform clock typography, placement, and backplate across the system and all apps”. The other is a single status icon. Due to the small screen size, “only one icon is shown at a time, based on priority”.
