Wear OS Might Get Material You Dynamic Colors

When Android 12 launched with Material You design, one of our favorite related features came in the form of colors. Android 12 was the first version of Android to debut dynamic color theming that pulled colors from your wallpaper of choice to then spread them throughout the system. This made for an awesome personalized experience on your supported phone, one that you could essentially update on the regular to freshen up the vibes.

New code within Android 14 (developer preview 1) appears to show that this same dynamic color theming could come to Google’s Wear OS at some point down the road.

The folks at 9to5Google spotted the info within a wearables-related setting and is called “DYNAMIC_COLOR_THEME_ENABLED.” Now, that could be in reference to something else completely, but the “dynamic” portion of that setting sure sounds familiar and could make some sense in a wearable that is all about personal style.

Of course, we have no idea if or when Google will implement this, but it would likely take a Wear OS update. We also don’t know how far along this change is and if it’s close to shipping in an update later this year or if Google has only just begun trying to add it.

The other thing is that we don’t know how this would work on Wear OS watches. On the Pixel Watch and Wear OS 3, Google has already adopted parts of Material You. The whole Wear OS 3 experience, at least on the Pixel Watch, looks very modern compared to Wear OS 2. But how would dynamic colors work on a watch that is mostly just black?

Google could do some cool things. Since we don’t really use wallpapers on watches, they could let you pick and choose a color that is then spread about the UI of the watch. Or maybe it’ll pull from your phone’s color palette to have it match to your wearable. However Google attempts this dynamic color idea, it should only add another level of personalization in a device that can always use more.