5 Useful Features You Probably Didn’t Realize About on a Google Pixel Watch

Google’s smartwatches have improved significantly over the years, with the Google Pixel Watch 4 being among the best you can buy today. It tells the time, tracks your steps, has sensors for health tracking, lets you see phone notifications, handles media playback, and everything else you want from a smartwatch. These features are well-known and part of most users’ daily lives, but your Pixel Watch also has a ton of cool hidden features that you probably didn’t know about.

Just like the new features coming in WearOS 7 later this year, your Google Pixel Watch already has plenty of features you’ve probably never seen before. Some of these are fairly recent additions to Android smartwatches, while others have been around since the first Pixel Watch was released in 2022. These include things that make everyday tasks much faster, ways to control your smartphone with your watch, and a notification that pops up every time you’re about to leave your phone behind.

Gestures and shortcuts are a welcome addition on any device, but perhaps even more so on smartwatches, where smaller screens make it harder to use the touchscreen for every little thing. The Pixel Watch comes with plenty of gestures, some of which also exist on other smartwatches like Samsung’s Galaxy Watches.

However, there are still some exclusive gestures. The one you’ll probably use most often is the double pinch. To use it, you tap your thumb and index finger together twice, as if you were pinching something. This motion can stop or ignore timers, send quick replies, scroll through notifications, and take photos with the Camera app. There’s also the wrist twist gesture, which involves rotating your wrist to quickly move the watch away from you. This is used to hide expanded notifications, silence calls, and ignore alarms. There’s also the Pixel-exclusive Raise to Talk gesture, where you bring your watch closer to your ear to invite Gemini with your voice.

Gestures are enabled by default and you can learn more about them in Settings. To do this, go to General, Pixel Tips and Gestures, or Gestures, Hand Gestures and Education. You can also disable them if you don’t plan to use them. To turn off gestures on your Pixel Watch, open Settings, go to Gestures, then Hand Gestures, and turn off the switches for the ones you don’t want.

The Pixel Watch doesn’t have a physical camera, but there is a Camera app on Wear OS. This may seem confusing at first, but it exists for a very useful feature: controlling your phone’s camera using your Pixel Watch.

With the Camera app installed on your Pixel Watch and a paired smartphone open, you can prop your phone on a tripod or stand and take photos from your watch screen. Here you can preview how the image or video will look before pressing the capture button, and you can even use the double pinch gesture to start recording a video or taking a photo.

This ability is enabled by default as long as you use the Camera app, but you need to download the app itself manually from the Play Store. Launching the app on your smartwatch automatically opens your phone’s camera, and you can set whether a photo is taken instantly or there’s a timer from the Camera app on your watch. You can also adjust the zoom, choose to use the rear or front camera, and much more, all on your watch.

Smart watches are above all practical. The convenience of being able to see updates on your wrist, track important health stats, skip a song you don’t like, and also pay for things. NFC has been available on Google smartwatches for a long time now, allowing you to open the Wallet app on your Pixel Watch to tap to pay for groceries and more. This feature, while certainly convenient, had some drawbacks: opening an app wasn’t much faster than pulling out your phone or a card to pay.

Google made this experience easier with Express Checkout in a recent update. With express payment enabled, you can hold an unlocked Pixel Watch in front of a scanner to make seamless payments without opening an app. Google says this is incredibly secure because the watch uses an algorithm to determine whether you actually intend to pay.

You can enable express payment on your Google Pixel Watch using the Pixel Watch app on your phone. In the app, tap Google, then Google Wallet, then Wallet Settings. You can then tap “Tap to Pay & Transit” and enable the express checkout switch from here. Note that this only works with a paired smartphone and requires a PIN or password on your Pixel Watch. Additionally, the feature only works when wrist detection is enabled.

Getting to a place you’ve never been before is much easier today than it was just a few decades ago. You don’t need to navigate a large physical map, spend hours figuring out where you currently are, and there’s no need to stop every once in a while to ask for directions. This is due to the convenience with which travel apps like Google Maps and their alternatives make getting from one place to another provided you have an internet connection.

The Google Maps app on your phone can download offline maps for specific areas, and you can also use it to download them to view on your Pixel Watch. To do this, find a location using the Google Maps app on a smartphone paired with your Pixel Watch. Tap the address, click the three dots at the bottom right, then tap Download Offline.

The next time you charge your Pixel Watch, the offline map will sync with your phone and you can use it on your smartwatch. You can also open the Google Maps app on your watch and go to Offline Maps to download the ones you’ve downloaded to your paired smartphone. Once done, you can view the map on your Pixel Watch, track your location, and view some directions.

Most of us take our phone everywhere we go, but we don’t always think about it. Luckily, most smartwatches, like your Galaxy or Apple Watch, have a feature that tells you if you leave your phone behind for a while now. This feature was also added to Pixel Watches earlier this year.

The feature isn’t enabled by default, but you can easily configure it in the Google Pixel Watch app on a smartphone paired with your watch. In the app, select your watch, go to Watch Preferences, then Security. You will have the option to enable “Notify if forgotten” here.

When the feature is enabled, your Pixel Watch will use your location and Bluetooth to see if you have moved a certain distance from your phone and show a notification on your watch if you have. Also note that this feature requires Bluetooth to be enabled on both your smartphone and Pixel Watch to work.