Android 16 introduces Live Updates and Google shared more details about them at I/O 2025, including what to expect in the future, like Wear OS support.
On phones, Live Updates appear on the always-on display, as a status bar chip, and at the top of the notification drawer and lockscreen. More precisely, “Live Updates will always be at the top of the notification stack, ranking only below heads-up notifications or notifications that are reserved for the most important and urgent alerts.”
More broadly, Google — with Live Updates and notification styles — wants to standardize “how the Android’s platform’s notifications are being built, used, and displayed in the UI.”
Notification styles are built around the more common and high-usage use cases for notifications. This has the benefit of streamlining development, as they have well-defined APIs for very specific functionality, and the benefit of a system-provided layout for consistent experiences.
Today, Live Updates are for rideshare, delivery, and navigation use cases. Google says to be on the “lookout for more use cases that will be supported under the live updates umbrella at Android 16.” We learned on Tuesday that Live updates from Google Maps, Waymo One, and Uber Eats are coming over the next year.
Meanwhile, the company says to not “use it for ads, promotions, chat messages, or anything spammy.”
Users can turn them on/off on a per app basis. It appears that you can just swipe right on them to do so: “Once toggled off, your app’s notifications won’t have a chip or any other prominent features until the user manually turns the feature back on in Settings.”
Live Updates are coming to phones and foldable in 2025, “with support for wearables coming later in 2026.” That’s presumably in reference to Wear OS, with the iOS equivalent (Live Activities) working quite well on the Apple Watch.
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