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Your smartwatch is finally getting the one thing it was weirdly missing.

Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

If you have ever opened an app on your Wear OS smartwatch and had no idea what time it was, Google is working on a fix. In October, the company launched a Wear OS canary emulator inside Android Studio. It lets developers try out new features and design tweaks well before Google ships them to anyone’s wrist.

The biggest addition in this build is a status bar that never leaves. It lives at the top edge of your round watch face, floats above whatever app you have open, and keeps the clock and your watch’s status icons in view.

What does the new status bar look like?

Google wants the clock to look identical everywhere, so the font, position, and the plate behind it will be uniform across Wear OS and every app you use. That should make your watch feel more polished.…