Your Pixel Watch emergency SOS behavior is changing

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.

Last month, though, we spotted work on a change to that workflow that would require positive confirmation of user intent by adding a step requiring you to press and hold the screen for three seconds. Just days later, Google confirmed the change, announcing that this behavior would become the new default for Pixel Watch users as it rolled out.

Three weeks later, 9to5Google has now spotted the update finally hitting smartwatches. After updating to Personal Safety for Wear OS version 2025.01.23.x you should be presented with a new notification on your Pixel Watch introducing you to the new emergency call process.

While this is ultimately just a small tweak to the old routine, considering what could be on the line in an emergency, make sure you take a moment to appreciate how this safety system operates — while you probably aren’t planning to use it any time soon, if and when that moment arrives you don’t want to be second-guessing yourself and feeling unsure about whether or not help is on the way.

If you don’t like the thought of this extra confirmation step at all, you can always go into watch settings and manually switch back to the old behavior.