YouTube Music is coming to Google’s Wear OS, after launching on Apple Watch last year
Image Credit: YouTube Music
After killing off the Google Play Music app on their smartwatches, YouTube Music users have been waiting for a Wear OS app for almost a year.
Google I/O is the company’s annual developer conference focused on software. This year’s I/O showcased Android 12, new AI and machine learning tools, as well as updates to Google Workspace, Photos and Maps. Google also touched on updates to their Android-based operating system for smartwatches and other wearables – Wear.
Google shutdown Play Music on Wear OS last summer, before discontinuing the streaming service entirely at the end of 2020. Prior to the shutdown, Google provided users with a tool to transfer their library across to YouTube Music. Google launched YouTube Music on the Apple Watch in October last year, since then we’ve been wondering when they would launch the streaming service on their own smartwatch operating system.
At I/O 2021, Google announced a YouTube Music app would be coming to Wear in the near future. We don’t know too much about the watch app as of yet, other than it will allow smart downloads for subscribers, allowing Music Premium members to listen to music on the go, without WiFi or mobile data. The new version of Wear is due in Spring this year, with the app coming “later this year”.