This little notification for your earbuds just got a big upgrade on your Pixel

Google is currently in the midst of rolling out a neat visual upgrade to Android’s headphone and earbud status notifications, and it is making it significantly easier to check your accessories’ power levels.

For reference, up until now, the at-a-glance notification for connected devices only highlighted the battery icon paired with the actual battery percentage in text. Now, Google is making the same UI a lot more glanceable.

The new UI was first brought to light by Reddit user Key-Tangerine5941 in the r/GooglePixel subreddit. We scrambled to check it out, and were pleased to find it live on one of our devices. For reference, the updated UI wasn’t live on said device yesterday, suggesting it’s a very recent server-side rollout.

If the updated UI has been rolled out to you, the notification will now surface with color-coded rings around the icons of each individual earbud and the charging case, as seen in the image below. That, paired with helpful icons at the top of each circle, should provide users with quick battery status updates at a glance when you open your earbuds’ case.

Color-coded battery percentage rings arrive

Old (left), new (right)

Presumably, the rings will turn yellow when you’re under 50 percent, and then red at some point after that.

Additionally, as shown in the (new) screenshot above, distinct icons above each earbud and case’s logo also highlight its current charging/battery status. For example, with the right earbud out of its case, the notification highlights that the earbud is currently in use and discharging battery.

Similarly, the left earbud is placed in the charging case, and hence, the notification highlights it with a lightning bolt icon. The case, with its battery down to 92 percent, pops up with a battery-discharging icon (considering that it’s charging the left earbud), and a green ring that is not completely full. This is all information that you couldn’t glean from the old notification.

According to Google’s own documentation, the updated UI will only show up when using compatible accessories that use Google’s Fast Pair technology, which includes the likes of the Pixel Buds, Nothing Ear series, Sony WF-1000XM4, WH-1000XM4, and later, all OnePlus Buds, Beats Studio Buds and Beats Studio Buds+, and many more.

As pointed out by the folks over at 9to5Google, the updated UI is rolling out with version 25.30.31 of Google Play Services. Has the new UI made its way to you? Let us know in the comments below!