Brady Snyder / Android Authority
Voice assistants like Google Assistant and Siri are nothing new, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for giving up on them. Siri’s frustrations have been well-documented, and Google spent the past two years stripping Assistant of features in preparation for Gemini’s widespread rollout. Gemini is officially Google’s voice assistant of the future, making its way to Android, Wear OS, and Nest hardware as the default in 2025. Now, users simply need to trust it.
For many, that trust will be difficult for Gemini to earn. I became disenfranchised with Google Assistant over the past few years, like many others, due to its lost features and general unreliability. That said, I decided to give Gemini a fair shake on Wear OS with my Samsung Galaxy Watch 8, and now I can’t imagine using my smartwatch without it. Having Gemini on my wrist saves me time every day with these five tasks, and here they are.
Do you use Gemini on your Galaxy Watch?
11 votes
Yes, all the time.
18%
From time to time.
27%
I tried it once and didn’t bother again.
18%
No.
36%
Setting nighttime alarms
Brady Snyder / Android Authority
Gemini forces you to reconsider what a smartwatch assistant can do. If you try requests that Google Assistant previously failed to complete, you may be surprised at how well Gemini performs thanks to natural-language understanding and deep integration with Wear OS apps. I used to spend a few minutes per night setting alarms, until I realized Gemini could create and enable all of them at once.
I’m a deep sleeper, and I set over 10 smartwatch alarms daily to make sure I wake up on time. Creating so many on such a small screen becomes a hassle quickly. This is where Gemini comes in: I can say a list of alarm times, and the assistant will set them up for me in the Samsung Alarm app automatically. It’s handy enough that I can’t imagine how I used to waste time manually swiping through times and tapping around the Alarm app.
Here’s the command I use: “Set alarms for 7:00 AM, 8:00 AM, 8:30 AM, and 9:00 AM.” The times might vary, but it’s always a handful of alarm times in the same request.
Plus, Gemini can handle conversational alarm requests, so you can forget the days of Assistant failing when a query wasn’t worded properly. Say something like, “Set five alarms every 30 minutes starting at 6:00 AM,” and it just works. This is the kind of small, everyday task I want Gemini on Wear OS to help me with.
Creating calendar events and reminders
Brady Snyder / Android Authority
Gemini’s conversational language understanding takes the pressure off the user to recite the perfect prompt. For greater personalization, Google added support for Personal context in August 2025, which gives Gemini access to your past chats and lets you add specific instructions for the chatbot.
Gemini’s memory of your preferences and important details might be more helpful on your smartwatch than your phone. Say you want to send a message to your partner or a coworker, but don’t want to say their full name out loud. Or, you’d like Gemini to know where your office is located and the name of your favorite restaurant. You can share that in Gemini chats or by adding an instruction in the Personal context tab of the Gemini app for Android.
I let Gemini in on some of these preferences, and that lets me use commands like “Add a calendar event for Thursday at my favorite dinner spot with my girlfriend.” Here, I don’t need to state the specific name of the restaurant or the person, because Gemini already knows them. The end result is a shorter request that’s easier to say while holding up my wrist, and is similarly easier for Gemini to understand.
Multimedia Q&As
Brady Snyder / Android Authority
Voice assistants can usually handle basic questions, saving you from needing to pull out your phone and use Google Search. In the past, Google Assistant on Wear OS would often fall back to search results if it didn’t know the answer to a question — requiring me to inevitably pull out my phone anyway when Assistant failed. Gemini is much better in this regard, as it can extract answers from the web rather than simply showing web links.
Gemini returns answers to these questions in plain text. They’re easier to read on a smartwatch display, and support multimedia context. For example, I’ll see a list of unfamiliar menu options at a restaurant, and ask Gemini about them on my Galaxy Watch. I can learn how to pronounce a dish, what’s inside it, and what it looks like, straight from my wrist.
In the above instance, I asked Gemini to “tell me how to pronounce gnocchi and show me a picture of it,” and the assistant passed with flying colors.
Saving time with multi-step actions
Brady Snyder / Android Authority
Gemini’s best Wear OS features use integration with apps and services like Google Messages, Samsung or Google Calendar, and Search. The experience is better when you leverage Gemini’s support for multi-step actions and use them all at once. I can ask Gemini for sporting event details, to add those details to my calendar, and text them to someone in a single command.
It’s an excellent way to source event information and share it with others using only your smartwatch. I use it to find details on conferences, local markets, sporting events, and everything in between. Any event publicly shared on the web is theoretically accessible to Gemini via its Search integration, and your smartwatch’s assistant can find it for you.
Here’s a Gemini command that leverages Search, Calendar, and the Messages integration simultaneously: “Add the next Giants game to my calendar and text the details to Alicia.”
Gemini surpasses Google Assistant because it can do all of the above in one go, and can identify multiple requests in a sentence. Meanwhile, Assistant on Wear OS might not successfully retrieve event info from the web, let alone share it with other apps.
Starting workouts and getting real-time stats
Brady Snyder / Android Authority
A common use case for voice assistants is starting workouts. I keep a Wear OS tile with my most-used workout types handy, and starting one takes only a few taps. Still, using a Gemini voice command is quicker, especially for infrequent workout types.
I like picking the right workout type for activity tracking, whether that’s basketball, swimming, or skiing. The specificity is crucial for getting accurate fitness data. Rather than scroll through the long list of workout types, I’ll ask Gemini to start the right one instantly: “Start a walking workout.”
Gemini’s usefulness goes beyond starting or ending a workout. It can recite real-time activity data during my workout, such as heart rate, distance, or duration. This feature instantly makes my Wear OS watch competitive with Workout Buddy on Apple Watch and Garmin integration on Meta smart glasses.
I mastered Gemini on Wear OS by trying everything
Brady Snyder / Android Authority
It’s true that my Gemini on Wear OS commands only save me a few minutes each day, but they add up over time. Despite using a smartwatch for the last decade-plus, I had recently started using mine less, often grabbing my Android phone instead. The frustration of Wear OS tasks taking longer than they would on my phone got the best of me.
Google adding Gemini to smartwatches made me want to try to do as much as I could by voice. I tried things Google Assistant and Siri failed to do for years, and Gemini stepped up to the plate almost every time. Seeing Gemini handle complex tasks consistently encouraged me to push its limits further, and I kept coming away impressed.
Gemini does have limits, like any AI product. It could get things wrong, or say it can’t do something that it can. However, I do more with my Galaxy Watch 8 than I have with a smartwatch in years, all with fewer taps. That’s the experience a voice assistant should provide on a wearable, and Gemini does it.
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