Your Wear OS smartwatch will now warn you when an earthquake is about to happen

If you live in an earthquake-prone region, receiving alerts about potential seismic activity as soon as possible is critical. That’s why Google launched its Android earthquake alerts feature in 2020, which detects earthquakes by aggregating sensor data from millions of phones. When it detects a quake, Google sends a warning to your device with the estimated magnitude and distance to the epicenter. While these alerts are currently limited to phones, they appear to be coming to smartwatches soon.

The Google System Release Notes page was recently updated to state, “you’ll get alerts on Wear when an earthquake is expected to cause shaking.” The “Wear” in this note refers to wearables running Wear OS, which, like Android phones, ship with the Google Play Services app. This feature is rolling out with Google Play Services version 25.21.

Google hasn’t publicly confirmed the rollout, but we’ve been expecting its arrival since the beginning of the year after discovering it in an APK teardown. Our analysis revealed that the alerts on wearables will mirror the information shown on phones, providing the estimated distance to the epicenter and the initial magnitude when shaking is detected.

The introduction of earthquake alerts is a great addition to the Wear OS platform. People with cellular-enabled smartwatches often leave their phones behind for exercise or routine tasks, and with this feature, they won’t have to worry about missing a potential earthquake warning. Android’s earthquake alert system may not be perfect, but giving people even a few seconds’ notice of an impending earthquake could make all the difference.