Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 can now control your Galaxy Buds

New Samsung Wear OS watches expand the firm's ecosystem

Galaxy Buds
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 has just added a new feature to its cache of tricks – it’s now able to control a pair of the Samsung Galaxy Buds, as long as they’re paired to your phone and not just the watch.

While the existing Galaxy Watch 4 setup lets users control the Galaxy Buds when connected to the watch, prior to the update the control didn't extend to a pair connected to the smartphone that the watch was connected to. Still with me?

Now, instead of only providing control over smartwatch-connected Galaxy Buds, the Galaxy Watch 4 lets users control the earbuds hooked up to their phones. It’s a fairly small trick, but it’s one that'll make life a lot easier for most of us because we're probably more inclined to keep the Galaxy Buds connected to our phone rather than our watch.

That's an important point to note, as well: it only works for Galaxy Buds, where it now displays the earbuds' battery level, enables you to tweak noise-cancellation settings, amongst other features. Those alone are a useful entourage of audio features to have at the tip of your fingers to tweak and change.

Phone-connected earbuds

(Image credit: Android Police)

As reported by the crew over at Android Police, the wave of "updated plugins for the Galaxy Buds+, Buds Live, Buds Pro, and Buds 2 deliver these updates to owners," and they're all available through the Galaxy Store.

Though these new user-friendly updates are welcome amongst the wider Samsung community, there's still a long way to go before the Galaxy Buds dominate the true wireless earbuds arena, ousting the current leaders in the Apple AirPods and Apple AirPods Pro. Indeed, even with the help of greater integration within the wider Samsung ecosystem, there's still a long road ahead for the Korean firm.

Luke Wilson

Luke is a former news writer at T3 who covered all things tech at T3. Disc golf enthusiast, keen jogger, and fond of all things outdoors (when not indoors messing around with gadgets), Luke wrote about a wide-array of subjects for T3.com, including Android Auto, WhatsApp, Sky, Virgin Media, Amazon Kindle, Windows 11, Chromebooks, iPhones and much more, too.