Android XR glasses are coming in 2026. Right here’s what you’ll be able to count on from the consumer interface and expertise.
Since December, Google has provided design documentation and different growth instruments to let builders construct Android XR apps for glasses. There are two type components and they’re formally referred to as:
- AI Glasses characteristic audio system, a microphone, and the digital camera.
- Show AI Glasses add a small display. Single show fashions are known as monocular, whereas twin screens are binocular and coming later.
You because the wearer can flip off the show at any time. As such, apps should be totally purposeful when in audio-only mode.
{Hardware}
By way of bodily controls, Google is mandating an influence change/button, touchpad (2), and digital camera button (3) on all Android XR glasses. Fashions with screens can even have a show button (1) that has up to now been positioned on the underside of the stem.
The digital camera button is fairly easy with a faucet taking a photograph, whereas holding down captures video. Press once more to finish the recording, whereas a double press launches the Digital camera app. Equally, the show button will “Wake/Sleep” the display so you’ll be able to go audio-only.
The touchpad permits for the next:
- Faucet: Play / Pause / Affirm
- Contact & maintain: Invoke Gemini
- Swipe
- Audio: Subsequent / Earlier / Dismiss
- Show: UI Navigation like scrolling lists, transfer focus, and click on buttons.
- 2-finger swipe: Regulate quantity
- Swipe down:
- Show: Again. This allows you to return to the Residence Display screen or the earlier display when navigating inside apps.
Android XR glasses can even have two LEDs: “one for the wearer and one for bystanders.”
The LED offers visible suggestions relating to characteristic and system states and needs to be thought of when occupied with the holistic consumer expertise. These are system UI indicators and may’t be modified.
Software program
On Show AI Glasses, you’ll have a Residence display that Google equates to your cellphone’s lockscreen. On the backside of this display is the always-visible “system bar” that reveals the time, climate, notifications, alerts, chips, and Gemini visible suggestions.
Above that, you’ll see:
- Contextual, glanceable data with out requiring any enter
- Shortcuts to what you probably wish to do subsequent
- Multitasking talents when a number of actions are operating concurrently
What can seem within the system bar
Notifications seem in pill-shaped chips and broaden as soon as in focus.
Lastly, there’s the app view. “Glimmer” is the title of the design language on Android XR glasses.
Sharp corners are discouraged as they “can create visible pockets that lead the consumer’s eye into.” As an alternative, rounded corners “keep away from drawing the consumer’s consideration into part corners.”
Apps very a lot should take into consideration coloration when designing for optical-see-through shows. One attention-grabbing consideration is how “some colours use extra energy and generate extra warmth than others.”
Inexperienced is the least energy hungry, blue is essentially the most, when evaluating colours of equal tone as seen on the suitable. Reduce the variety of pixels you gentle up. The brighter the display, the warmer the show will get. Don’t fill the display with all white, as this will trigger thermal mitigation.
Equally, icons needs to be unfilled to keep away from gentle bleed, or halation. Google recommends Materials Symbols Rounded when you don’t want customized iconography.
Jetpack Compose Glimmer consists of elements optimized for Glasses:
- Buttons
- Title chip: Displaying a brief title, title, or standing, that is the equal of app/prime bars on cell.
- Playing cards
- Lists
- Stack: “collapsed record that solely shows one piece of content material at a time, in a stacked visible, reminiscent of a notification or card.”
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