IT Home reported on April 30 that developer Mishaal Rahman (Mishaal Rahman) recently released a blog post, saying that Google plans to introduce new features in the Android 15 system, which can control the media output of the mobile phone through the paired Pixel Watch smart watch.
When a user pairs a Wear OS watch with an Android phone, they can control the phone's media playback on the watch, but the lack of the ability to switch media inputs means that users will need to pick up the phone if they want to change the device from which the phone outputs audio.
When you pair your Android phone with a smartwatch running Wear OS, you'll usually need to set up a companion app on your phone. This companion app usually allows you to change the various options on your watch from the comfort of your phone's big screen, but it also syncs important data from your phone, such as notifications, calls, text messages, and more. Before this data can be collected and sent, though, the companion app needs to request a lot of sensitive permissions on your phone.
When you pair your Android phone with a smartwatch running Wear OS, you'll usually need to set up a companion app on your phone. This companion app usually allows you to change the various options on your watch from the comfort of your phone's big screen, but it also syncs important data from your phone, such as notifications, calls, text messages, and more. Before this data can be collected and sent, though, the companion app needs to request a lot of sensitive permissions on your phone.
Rather than requiring the user to grant each permission individually, the Windows Hello companion app can leverage Android's Windows Hello companion device profile feature to request access to these necessary permissions at once.
For example, the companion device profile for a smartwatch, android.app.role.COMPANION_DEVICE_WATCH, grants the companion app permissions related to calendar access, phone call access, SMS access, contact access, nearby device scanning, and more.
On Android 15, the companion app needs to request access to a new platform called MEDIA_ROUTING_CONTROL if it wants to control the watch.
MEDIA_ROUTING_CONTROL permissions allow the companion app to "access the list of available devices and control which device transmits or casts audio or video from other apps."
Specifically, this permission gives the app (and your smartwatch) the right to change the location of the phone's output audio, and IT Home attaches two examples as follows:
- For example, you watch a video on your phone and play the audio in an external way. If you want to switch to headphones, you don't need to interrupt the video on Android 15 and can do it on your watch.
- For example, if you're listening to music on your phone in the kitchen, but want to seamlessly stream it to your smart speaker in your living room, you can switch it with just a few taps on your watch.