Google is finally releasing the official Tiles API which will enable third-party Wear OS app developers to introduce new Tiles for the Wear OS smartwatches.
Earlier, the initial state of this Google Tiles, introduced in 2019 was lacking an official API for Tiles that could offer these third-party developers something of their interest like introducing their own development of new Tiles. This, therefore, had caused these developers to develop an unofficial API, using the same internal API for the Wear OS app in order to customize Tiles through API extraction.
The new Tiles feature which brought in tiny yet informative widgets such as Goals, Heartrate, Next event, Forecast, Timer, and Headlines to these smart wearables could be accessed with just a simple swipe on the screen, despite its popularity was undergoing quite some interruptions and the extraction seemed to be quite a threat for Google.
Therefore, in order to avoid that, finally, the API is undergoing up-gradation for the third-party developers in order to avoid any breakage from extraction. Speaking on this, the Android platform comments:
“This checks in the app-side of the Wear Tiles API. Tests (and testing libs) have not yet been added, but will come in a future CL. This version exists really to start kicking off API reviews.”
Once the ugradation is over, developers will be able to witness this API by updating to the the AndroidX version.