- Your Pixel Watch can summon emergency services by tapping the crown five times.
- In order to avoid accidental calls, Google is adding a new confirmation step.
- While this is the new default, you can manually switch to the old automatic-call behavior.
When you’re in an emergency situation, time is of the essence, and minutes can spell the difference between life and death. And while that’s exactly why we have features on modern devices like car crash detection, helping to automate access to emergency services, implementing a system like that can be a fine balancing act, as you also need to avoid wasting the time of authorities with false positives. Last month we learned about a small change Google was working on to help reduce unneeded emergency calls, and this week it looks like it’s finally rolling out.
So far, Google Pixel Watch models have offered the ability to quickly connect with emergency services by rapidly tapping the crown on the watch five times in a row. Once activated in this fashion, you’d see a short countdown on your smartwatch screen giving you the opportunity to cancel if you summoned the feature in error, otherwise an emergency call would automatically connect.