Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview 2 Released, Wrist Gestures for 3rd-Party Apps and More

Developer Preview 2 has been launched for those running Android Wear 2.0, but take notice that Google and the Android team still label this build as “not intended for daily use.”

Catered to developers who want to get their apps prepared for the public launch of Android Wear 2.0, the latest developer preview features a bump to the Android Platform API 24 (now matching Nougat), Wearable Drawers enhancements, and opened Wrist Gesture commands for 3rd-party applications. 

While the big block of text looks like there are a lot of changes, essentially none of it is geared towards end users. Don’t let that surprise you, though, as these are “developer” previews. For us folk who are patiently awaiting the launch of Android Wear 2.0, we are getting close — only a couple more months until its fall.

If you are a developer, go grab it!

What’s New

• Platform API 24 – We have incremented the Android Platform API version number to 24 to match Nougat. You can now update your Android Wear 2.0 Preview project’s compileSdkVersion to API 24, and we recommend that you also update targetSdkVersion to API 24.
• Wearable Drawers Enhancements – We launched the wearable drawers as part of the Android Wear 2.0 Preview 1, along with UX guidelines on how to best integrate the navigation drawer and action drawer in your Android Wear app. In Preview 2, we have added additional support for wearable drawer peeking, to make it easier for users to access these drawers as they scroll. Other UI improvements include automatic peek view and navigation drawer closure and showing the first action in WearableActionDrawer’s peek view. For developers that want to make custom wearable drawers, we’ve added peek_view and drawer_content attributes to WearableDrawerView. And finally, navigation drawer contents can now be updated by callingnotifyDataSetChanged.
• Wrist Gestures: Since last year, users have been able to scroll through the notification stream via wrist gestures. We have now opened this system to developers to use within their applications. This helps improve single hand usage, for when your users need their other hand to hold onto their shopping or their kids. See the code sample below to get started with gestures in your app:

Via: Android