Android Wear notifications revealed

Google's upcoming Android Wear operating system, the custom version of Android designed specifically for wearable gadgets including smartwatches, has been in development for some time, but we've seen little of the user interface. That changed this morning when screenshots of the in-development notifications system were posted online.

Google employee Timothy Jordan posted the screens to the official Android Developers Google+ page, saying "One of the coolest parts of Android Wear is how it extends the Android platform to a new generation of devices out of the box, without any need to update your app. If you have a notification-enabled app, those notifications will generally just work on your new wearable.

"It's striking how useful these notifications are and easy to imagine how much more valuable they could get with a little bit of additional development. With just a few lines of code you can deliver even richer experiences on the wearable by using stacks, pages, and voice replies."

The images show notifications from a range of apps, including Google Play Music, Google Calendar, addictive mobile game Clash of Clans, and alerts from a Nest thermostat - an unsurprising choice considering Google bought the company for $3.2 billion earlier this year.

The notifications appear to mimic the card-based layout seen in the Google Now assistant on Android 4.4 KitKat, with the app icon floating above the message to make it clear what the notification refers to. It's currently unclear whether Google intends the black background to be present in the final product, or if it is merely a placeholder that could be swapped out with the user's choice of wallpaper.

With Android Wear smartwatches from LG and Motorola expected later in the year, we won't have long to wait to find out how the system will work - and whether these designs make it to the finished product