iPhone’s top travel feature finally arrives on Galaxy and Pixel phones
Struggle with motion sickness? If you have a Pixel or Galaxy phone running Android 17, your struggles could soon be over.
It’s been known for a while that Google was working on a feature for Android called Motion Assist. Now, it’s finally available on all Google and Samsung phones running the latest major version of Android.
Motion Assist is designed for people who can’t read or use their phone in a moving vehicle without feeling nauseated. Small shapes appear at the edges of your phone’s screen and move in time with the vehicle as it turns, brakes, slows and accelerates. It should help to align what you see when moving with your inner ear senses.
Google began rolling out the feature last month, but it’s now widely available. To find it, open Settings and search for “motion assist”. If you can’t see it, make sure your Google Play services are up to date – it requires version 26.33.32 or later. Our Pixel 11 Pro review sample has the feature.
Android Authority
The Motion Assist feature can be triggered automatically when your phone detects you’re in a moving vehicle, or you can manually enable it via a toggle in Quick Settings. You can even customise the colour, shape and opacity of the shapes, or let it change at random every few seconds.
The feature is by no means unique. The iPhone has had a similar feature, called Vehicle Motion Cues, since September 2024 when iOS 18 launched.
While it won’t work for everyone, the science behind it is robust. As the shapes move in time with the vehicle, they give your eyes the motion context that it’s usually missing when looking at a stationary screen. It’s known as “sensory conflict data” and has been specifically studied.
