Wear OS smartwatches are getting a new single-note Google Keep tile. It lets you pick a note to display in the tile all the time. Google announced this feature at its I/O developer conference last month alongside several other updates for its smartwatch platform, some of which have already been rolled out.
The new tile has a simplistic UI that asks you to “select one of your notes to display in the tile”. A “Choose note” button lets you pick the note you want to see all the time next to your watch’s homescreen. Tapping it opens the full Google Keep feed with pinned notes or lists appearing at the top. Once you select a note, it will show up in the tile. It works similarly to the Android homescreen widget added in March.
This feature is useful for keeping short but important notes handy. That’s because you can only see four lines of a note in the tile. If your notes are longer, you will have to tap on the tile to open the full note. This screen lets you take actions (Add reminder, Pin, or Archive) without having to open the Google Keep app. However, swiping back doesn’t take you to the main feed again. It will exit the full note and go back to the tile.
This Google Keep tile support background colors
Folks over at 9to5Google discovered that this tile supports background colors or images. However, adding an image background ‘just makes the tile black,” the publication reports. Tapping it still opens Google Keep, though. Moreover, the app lets you add multiple single-note tiles. So if you find this feature useful, you might want to add multiple tiles and take full advantage of it. It’d be even better if Google added AOD (always-on display) support for tiles, blurring the screen when the wrist is down.
Nonetheless, this single-note tile for Google Keep on Wear OS should soon be available to you. It’s rolling out via a server-side update, with version 5.23.202.03.97 or newer of the app confirmed to be the compatible version. This update follows the addition of a note creation tile in August last year. Google has also recently pushed several updates to the Android version of Keep. Coinciding with this Wear OS release, the Android app is getting more Material You design elements. These include rounded corners for the navigation drawer and pill-shaped toggles in settings.