Wear OS 5.1 is almost ready to bring Android 15 to your Pixel Watch

The Wear OS 5 rollout for Pixel Watch didn’t go exactly to plan. After the update to Wear OS 5 was found to be causing problems for some Pixel Watch 1 and 2 owners in September, Google put the update on pause. With the update back on as of earlier this month, Google’s turned its attention to Wear OS 5.1, which is now available for developer testing in Android Studio’s emulator. Despite only being a point-one update in name, the next version is based on Android 15 as opposed to Wear OS 5’s Android 14.

Thanks to reporting on Android Authority by Mishaal Rahman, we’ve known that Wear OS 5.1 would be based on Android 15 since August. Since 2022’s Wear OS 3, Google has applied a full version number bump when a Wear OS update includes a new Android version, so releasing Android 15 on watches as Wear OS 5.1 signals a shift in strategy.

Back in August, Rahman said that Android’s recently adopted trunk-based development model — which sees short-lived code “branches” for new features merged into a main “trunk” on a regular basis — “has resulted in a single main development branch for all of Android.” Test builds for Wear OS 5.1 have been named similarly to regular Android builds that have been created under this development model, with IDs that begin with AP4A. Google’s trunk stable project could mean that it’s simpler to develop Wear OS on the latest Android version than it used to be.

The new release officially being named Wear OS 5.1 rather than Wear OS 6 could have something to do with setting expectations. Wear OS 5 feels remarkably similar to Wear OS 4, to the extent that even techy users like myself might not spot the type of differences you’d typically expect from a full, numbered update. Wear OS 5.1 is looking similarly light on new user-facing features. The examples Google highlights in its notes for developers are a new Credential Manager API and the ability to route watch app media playback through a watch’s built-in speaker, additions that lower-engagement users may never even notice.

Android 14-based Wear OS 5 has been causing trouble with Android 15’s new Private Space feature — notifications from Private Space apps have been appearing alongside normal notifications on Wear OS, which goes against Private Space’s general purpose. Updating Wear OS to run on Android 15 should hopefully help alleviate that shortcoming.

When should we expect Wear OS 5.1?

It’s not clear when Wear OS 5.1 will start rolling out to our own watches; it’s only just begun external developer testing in the Android Studio emulator. Given the accelerated pace of Android releases generally — Android 16 is already available for testing on Pixel phones and tablets — it might not be too far in the future.

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Move over, Android 15