Galaxy Watch 9 owners just got a much less disruptive way to update

Zac Kew-Denniss / Android AuthorityAdd Android Authority on Google: TL;DR The Galaxy Watch 9 appears to be Samsung’s first smartwatch with seamless updates. The feature lets new firmware download and install in the background while you keep using the watch. The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 may also support seamless updates. Seamless updates arrived with Android Nougat, but Samsung took years to adopt the technology. The Galaxy A55 was the first Samsung phone to support it, before the Galaxy S25 extended it to the flagship lineup. Now, the company appears to be expanding the same convenience to its wearables, with the Galaxy Watch 9 becoming the first Galaxy smartwatch to support seamless updates.Several X users (h/t: SammyGuru) spotted the feature with the Watch 9’s first software update since its launch. The roughly 193MB update carries the August 5, 2026 security patch, and users installing it have seen the seamless update process in action. Rather than taking the watch completely offline, the new firmware can be downloaded and installed in the background while the watch is in use.That’s a small change, but it could make a noticeable difference every time an update arrives. With conventional updates, you typically have to wait while the device installs the new firmware and restarts. Seamless updates shift most of that process into the background, leaving only a short restart before you can start using the updated software.Samsung hasn’t made much noise about the feature, either. It isn’t listed among the Watch 9’s headline specifications or called out in the update’s changelog. Instead, users evidently discovered it while installing the watch’s first firmware update.Unfortunately, Samsung can’t simply add this to older Galaxy Watches through One UI 9 Watch. Seamless updates rely on the device’s underlying storage and system architecture, so the hardware needs to support this feature from the start. Existing watches therefore aren’t expected to gain the feature through a software update.The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 could be next. It launched alongside the Watch 9 and may share the same update architecture, but we won’t know for certain until its first update arrives. Samsung is yet to roll out that firmware, and LTE models can sometimes take longer because their software requires additional carrier-related work.For now, the Watch 9 is the first Galaxy smartwatch to offer less disruptive software updates. That’s hardly a flashy upgrade, but it’s exactly the kind of behind-the-scenes improvement you’ll appreciate every time Samsung pushes new firmware to your wrist.Thank you for being part of our community. Read our Comment Policy before posting.