Lessons from WhatsApp's Wear OS journey

Hear directly from WhatsApp engineers on how they upgraded their Wear OS app at scale. This session covers the architectural and UX decisions behind integrating Material 3 and adopting Wear Widgets. Gain direct insight into the lessons, patterns and tools the team used to update their app and deliver a cohesive user experience. Speakers: Martin Pelant, Subhag Bhatia Chapters: 0:00 - Introduction 1:32 - Moving to a shared codebase 5:26 - Managing notification bridging 7:40 - Modernizing the Wear OS UI 11:08 - Handling wrist notification alerts 13:01 - Migrating from tiles to widgets 13:51 - Preventing the active user cliff with update reminders Watch the apps foundation sessions from Android Dev Summit 2026 → https://goo.gle/ADS26-Apps-Foundation Watch all the sessions from Android Dev Summit 2026 → https://goo.gle/ADS26-All-Sessions Subscribe to Android Developers → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs #AndroidDevSummit2026 Event: Android Dev Summit 2026 Products Mentioned: Wear OS, App Widgets for Android, Design