Paul Jones / Android Authority
TL;DR Android XR is about to take off, and Google’s been preparing three types of smart glasses, for launch over the next couple years.
As it gets ready for that hardware, we’re taking a look at the companion software that will exist on the phone side.
Features in development include an audio-only mode, conversation detection to mute notifications, and privacy-protecting camera tools.
At CES this year, smart glasses were everywhere, and if you haven’t tried a pair on yet, you’ll probably have the chance to soon. But for all the great progress we’re seeing across all things XR, we’re easily most excited about what’s coming next from Google. As we get ready to experience all the flavors of Google’s latest attempt at making smart glasses work, we’re getting an early peek at the software that may make this all possible.
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Over on Reddit’s Google Glass sub, user Oguie13 reports that when using the Android Studio preview release with the API set to Canary preview and installing a system image, they’re able to extract a Glasses companion app. This appears to be the same software we see in Google’s support documentation.
We got our hands on this APK, with the package name com.google.android.glasses.companion, and while we can’t yet complete the app’s setup process without actual Glasses hardware, we are able to get a bit of a preview of what to expect.
Some of this imagery matches what Google already exposed in its documentation, while other screens appear to have been updated, like those pairing instructions.
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