Your older Pixel Watch has been updated with a bunch of new tricks

Google has brought Wear OS 5 to the older Pixel Watches and delivered a former Pixel Watch 3 exclusive app too

Google Pixel Watch 2 press images
(Image credit: Google)
Carrie Marshall
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Quick Summary

Google's Wear OS 5 is rolling out now to both the first and second generation Pixel Watch. In addition to battery life and interface improvements it also includes the Pixel Recorder app.

As you'd expect from Google's latest wearable, the Pixel Watch 3 runs the latest Google wearable OS: Wear OS 5. And it also got an exclusive new app, Pixel Recorder, that makes it easy to capture audio wherever you happen to be. But now both the OS and the app are coming to older Pixel Watch models too.

Wear OS 5 is coming to the original and second generation Pixel Watches. As the official Google Pixel Watch blog explains, "Pixel Watch 1 and Pixel Watch 2 devices running WearOS 3.5 or WearOS 4.0 will receive the September 2024 software update with the Wear OS 5 upgrade starting today."

As ever, the rollout won't necessarily reach you immediately: the process takes a few weeks depending on the carrier you're with and the specific device you have. But it's great news for anyone worried that the arrival of the Pixel Watch 3 would make their existing watches obsolete.

What's the Pixel Recorder app for the Pixel Watch?

According to Google, the update includes Pixel Watch 1 and Pixel Watch 2 updates that will enable you to get "the grid-view app launcher, improved Camera controls and the Pixel Recorder functionality."

Originally released for the Pixel Watch 3, Google's Pixel Recorder app is coming to the earlier models too – although as the name indicates it does require you to also have a Pixel phone if you want to get the most from it. That's because in addition to recording audio, you can open up that audio on your Pixel phone and get a text transcript of it too.

We really liked the Pixel Watch 1 when it launched in October 2022, and we like the Pixel Watch 2 as well. Both devices have been improved with software updates since launching, so for example if Wear OS 5 delivers the same battery life improvements to those devices as it does for the Pixel Watch 3 you're looking at a boost of up to 20% in a long event such as a marathon. 

Carrie Marshall
Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).

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