My Pixel Watch sounds different and yours might too

What you need to know

• Some Pixel Watch owners have reported different Pixel Watch notification sounds after an update.
• The sounds have since reverted to the original Pixel Watch sounds, so this may have been a test.
• There's currently no way to manually change the sounds on a Pixel Watch.

This morning, I woke up to my Pixel Watch emitting very different sounds from the usual chimes it normally emits. Instead of the usual bell noises and low dings, these new sounds were decidedly more synthetic, some were slightly higher pitched, and some were even slightly louder than the original sounds.

That's particularly strange because there's no way to change the sounds on a Google Pixel Watch, so it's entirely likely that Google is testing new sounds for a certain subset of users of its best smartwatch. I've reached out to Google to find out more but didn't hear anything specific back in time for publishing. Here's a sample of the new sounds:

The change occurred when I switched back to the Pixel Fold yesterday to test out the Android 14 beta. I paired the watch to the phone and charged it up overnight, only to wake up to the new sounds. Some folks have reported similar occurrences since the watch launched, but there's been no official word from Google about new sounds.

I really loved the new sounds as they added a very different feel to the watch. Some were a bit louder than the existing sounds, which is great because I sometimes don't hear the existing notification sound when it plays. Unfortunately for me, the new sounds reverted to the old out-of-the-box sounds when I rebooted the watch and phone.

It would be great to see Google add a few more notification sounds to the Pixel Watch in time for the launch of the Pixel Watch 2. At the moment, you can only change the volume or toggle the watch between ring and vibrate-only modes.