Pixel Watch is getting far better media controls

Earlier this year, Google teased an upgrade to the media controls for the Pixel Watch. The promise was richer, more context-aware controls, specifically catering to podcast playback within YouTube Music, including actions like fast forward/rewind, playback speed adjustment, and queue management. Now, that richer media experience looks to be rolling out.

Previously, controlling media playing on your phone from your Pixel Watch was a fairly basic affair. You had the standard play/pause, next/previous track, and volume adjustment, alongside the track information. While functional, it lacked deeper control, especially for playlists or podcasts.

This latest update significantly enhances those system media controls. Flanking the standard playback buttons, you’ll now find two new additions when playing supported media, like content from YouTube Music. On the left, a new button reveals your “Up Next” queue. Tapping it displays the subsequent tracks, allowing you to jump directly to any song in the queue with a simple tap.

Over on the right, a three-dot overflow menu provides access to more nuanced controls tailored to the content type. For music in YouTube Music, this menu offers options to shuffle playback, give a track a thumbs up, or toggle repeat. Interestingly, another shortcut to the “Up Next” queue is also present here.

When listening to podcasts in an app like YouTube Music, the overflow menu adapts. Here, you’ll find controls to adjust the playback speed – each tap cycles through preset increments – and dedicated buttons to skip to the next or previous episode in the series.

It’s important to note that app developers need to implement support for these enhanced controls. For example, while playing audio from Pocket Casts on a paired phone, the new queue and overflow menu buttons appear on the watch but are grayed out and non-functional since Pocket Casts hasn’t yet integrated these richer Wear OS media capabilities.

This updated functionality was spotted rolling out to a Pixel Watch 3 running the latest Wear OS 5.1 build. To ensure you get the new controls when they reach your device, keep an eye on the “Wear Media” component via the Play Store on your watch; the required version appears to be 1.6.7.x or later.