Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Strings indicate Google is working on a Motion Cues feature that will likely help users mitigate motion sickness.
- Apple added the Vehicle Motion Cues feature in iOS 18 that adds animated black dots to the edges of your screen that mimic the direction of your vehicle to reduce sensory conflict and help stop motion sickness.
- Third-party Android apps can also prevent car sickness, but Google could bake in the feature for the broader Android market.
Update, November 22, 2024 (08:20 AM ET): The latest Google Play Services beta 24.47.30 beta adds a new activity and a Quick Settings tile to enable Motion cues. The feature is still not available as it is a work in progress.
Original article, November 19, 2024 (02:49 AM ET): Android and iOS have long reached phases of maturity, so Google and Apple now look at each other for inspiration on what the next feature would be for their respective operating systems. Apple introduced a Vehicle Motion Cues feature in iOS 18 to help iPhone and iPad users fight motion sickness (kinetosis). However, motion sickness isn’t an issue only for Apple users, as Android users can be equally affected. While there is a free Android app that helps stop car sickness (released many years before Apple announced the feature), Google is now working on bringing the feature to Android phones.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
Google Play Service v24.46.30 beta includes strings that indicate Google is developing a feature to help users fight motion sickness.
Code
<string name="motion_sickness_enabled_key">motion_sickness_enabled</string>
<string name="motion_sickness_settings_activity_label">Motion Cues</string>
<string name="motion_sickness_settings_page_description">Show visual cues to mitigate the motion sickness.</string>As you can see from the strings, Google’s feature is likely to be called Motion Cues. When enabled, Motion Cues will show visual cues to help users fight motion sickness.
Apple’s Vehicle Motion Cues feature in iOS 18 adds animated black dots to the edges of your screen that mimic the direction of your vehicle. This helps reduce the sensory conflict between what you see with your eyes and the motion your brain feels through your inner ears without massively disrupting the reading or watching experience.
While the strings are unclear on Google’s exact implementation, we presume it will be similar to Apple’s. The feature will also likely be delivered through Google Play Services (since the strings were spotted in the Play Services app) and likely not through an Android platform, so there’s hope that it will roll out across several Android versions as long as the device has Google Play Services.
This feature is not currently live within Play Services. We don’t know when it will be released to users or if it ever will.
Would you like to see Google bring Motion Cues to your Android flagship? Let us know in the comments below!
