December Pixel Watch Update Rolls Out to Pixel Watch 2 and Above

Google announced new features for the Pixel Watch 3 and Pixel Watch 4 this morning, but didn’t tell us exactly how those would arrive. Would we see them from a Pixel Watch companion app update or as a system update? It sure looks now like a Pixel Watch system update is the correct answer, as the December Pixel Watch update has gone live.

December Pixel Watch updates are available for the Pixel Watch 4, Pixel Watch 3, and Pixel Watch 2. The original Pixel Watch is technically no longer supported, so it may not see any new updates going forward. It was supposed to have seen its last update in October.

The new builds for the Pixel Watch December update are as follows:

• Pixel Watch 4 (WiFi & LTE): BP4A.251205.005.W7
• Pixel Watch 3 (WiFi & LTE): BP4A.251205.005.W7
• Pixel Watch 2 (WiFi & LTE): BP4A.251205.005.W7

Here’s the full December update change list from Google:

• • Introducing Two new gestures, Double pinch and wrist turn.
  • Double pinch: On your Pixel Watch 4, just tap your index finger and thumb together twice to get things done. Use it to scroll through alerts, instantly send the first Smart Reply, manage your timer and stopwatch, snooze an alarm, play/pause music, or even snap a photo. Plus, we’ll soon be adding the ability to answer and end calls with this same simple gesture.
  • Wrist turn: quickly turn your wrist away from you and back to silence an incoming call, close an alerting notification.
  • These exciting new gestures will be on by default, so you can start using them right away once you get the software update.

• • On-demand education with tutorials to learn about the gesture and feature

• • Improvements on the smart reply experience for pixel watch by introducing custom Gemma-based model and expanding to Pixel Watch 3
  • Utilizing an on-device language model to generate smart replies when not tethered to the phone
  • Smart Replies are powered by our new on-device model—a derivative of Google’s powerful Gemma language model, but optimized to run entirely on your wrist.
  • With this new model, Smart Replies are now 2x faster than before and nearly 3x more efficient in terms of memory usage.

To check for the update, which appears to be live on my Pixel Watch 4 review unit, you can try this tapping trick.

// Google