Android and Wear OS get a bunch of new features

Google has announced a number of new features for Android, Chromebook and Wear OS to improve connectivity, productivity and accessibility. The announcement was made to coincide with Mobile World Congress (MWC), which kicks off today in Barcelona. The new features include support for quick pairing on Chromebooks, Google Keep shortcuts for your phone and smartwatch, and new Accessibility modes for Wear OS.

The company revealed that Fast Pair will soon be able to connect new Bluetooth headsets to Chromebooks with a single tap. If a user has already set up a headset on their Android phone, their Chromebook will automatically connect to it as well. Google hasn’t given details on the release window for this update, but noted that it will be rolled out “soon.”

In another audio enhancement announced today, Google Meet will soon offer noise cancellation on more Android mobile devices to filter out background noises when talking during meetings.

The company also revealed that users will soon be able to easily increase the size of content including text, images and videos in Chrome by up to 300% while maintaining the page layout. Users will be able to set their preferred content size as the default so they don’t have to change it every time they launch the browser. The new update is available in Chrome beta starting today and will be made available to all users soon.

The company also plans to release a Google Keep single note widget to help users quickly manage their notes and check off to-do lists from the home screen. The widget will display reminders, background colors, and images added to notes from the Keep app when synced with a smartwatch. Google Keep is also introducing two new shortcuts for users to create notes and to-do lists with just a tap on the watch face.

Google is introducing another productivity feature that allows users to use a stylus or touch the screen to annotate PDFs in the Google Drive app for Android. You can play around with different ink strokes to write notes or feedback, or use the highlighter tool to save important text to your tablet or phone. Later, you can hide, undo, delete, or save a new copy of your annotated documents. Hands-on annotation is now available on Google Drive for Android.

In addition, Wear OS gets two new audio and display modes designed to improve the accessibility of the watch. Users will soon have access to a mono-audio mode to help reduce disorientation caused by split audio. New color and grayscale correction modes will give users more options for displaying their watch.

The company is also launching new emoji combinations in Emoji Kitchen, a Gboard feature that allows users to submit sticker versions of Google’s emoji designs that are merged or remixed. There are new basketball team and spring options that users can play with and then share with others.

Another great new feature is the upcoming introduction of new touch payment animations in Google Wallet to help you verify in-store transactions. Google said that users will start seeing “happy penguins” and other characters starting next week. Support for Wallet is spreading around the world quite quickly. As recently as last August, it was available in “only” 45 countries.

 In a brief blog post, Google said that Wallet support for Wear OS is expanding to several new countries, namely Costa Rica, Ecuador and Kuwait. Along with these, the app is now available in sixty countries. The wallet is available on Wear OS 2 watches when paired with Android or iOS phones, and on Wear OS 3 watches (such as the Galaxy Watch4 and Watch5 series) when paired with Android phones.