Wear OS now supports passes, tickets, and transit directions

If you’re on the move all the time, actively engaged with people and the surroundings, a smartwatch can improve your quality of life by letting you jam out, check up on your digital life, and know how to get where you’re going. In the case of Google, the company has been on a slow and steady trudge to not only keep Wear OS alive, but to make actually useful changes to the platform. Today, at MWC 2024, the company is announcing two quality-of-life improvements for your quality-of-life improver that you will want to check out.

One feature addition to Wear OS you’ll enjoy if you use Google Wallet frequently is the ability to use passes, tickets, and membership cards in addition to the payment cards you already could use on your wearable device. Google, as it is wont to do, had been seeding out pass support since December by some accounts (via Android Police), but if you weren’t aware of this, now you know. If you haven’t been seeing your passes, tickets, or cards in the Wallet app, make sure to scroll through the full list. Select an item to show the associated QR code.

Transit directions finally arrive in Maps

The other feature, and this one is actually brand new, is the inclusion of transit directions within Google Maps. You’ll have the option to initiate navigation from either your watch or start from your phone and mirror your journey to your watch. You’ll see real-time departures where available plus point-to-point navigation when you need to use your legs. Previously, Maps on Wear OS only supported turn-by-turn directions for walking, cycling, and driving.

One extra tidbit that’s wearables-related is a big redesign of the Fitbit app that caters to all of the fitness and diet information you’ve generated through various devices and apps through the Health Connect API. The You and Today tabs will list pertinent metrics on your workout and vital functions alongside where they came from.