Google’s Wear OS neglect has left voice activation broken for months

Enlarge / A Wear OS watch. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Poor, dying Wear OS.

Apparently, the Google Assistant on Wear OS has been broken for months, and until now, no one at Google has noticed. About four months ago, diehard Wear OS users started a thread on the public Android issue tracker saying that the "OK Google" hotword no longer worked on Wear OS, and several claimed that the feature has been broken for months. Recently, news of the 900-user-strong thread spilled over to the Android subreddit, and after 9to5Google and other news sites picked it up, Google has finally commented on the issue.

The Verge quotes a Google spokesperson as saying the company is “aware of the issues some users have been encountering,” and it will “address these and improve the overall experience.” Google didn't give an ETA on how long a fix would take. Google offered a similar boiler-plate response back in that November thread, with a rep saying, "We’ve shared this with our engineering teams and will continue to provide updates as more information becomes available."

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