Google's swipeable Wear OS Tiles offer info at a glance

Swiping is one of the easiest and most intuitive gestures in the touchscreen armory, especially when you've got limited space. Google clearly gets that, having added swiping to Google Fit and Google Assistant on Wear OS smartwatches. Now, it's announcing Tiles, a new quick-access interface for more watch functions.

There are six Tiles in the new set: Goals, Next Event, Weather Forecast, Heart Rate, Headlines and Timer. You access them with a simple swipe left to see at-a-glance information about the latest news, how much is left on your timer, exactly how stressed you are, and so on. Before, swiping left and right would bring up Fit and Assistant respectively, but Google has slightly changed things in order to make way for its new information-rich Tiles.

You can touch and hold a tile to change the order in either the Wear OS smartphone app or directly on the watch, to make sure the ones you use the most are closest to hand.

Google says Tiles will roll out to all Wear OS watches in the next month, and more Tiles will be added in the future. However, it does caveat that "Certain features will vary by phone OS, watch or country."