Android 17 rolls out Motion Assist: dots aim to cut car sickness

Google is starting to roll out Motion Assist in Android 17. It’s an accessibility feature that adds small animated dots along the edges of the screen to help ease motion sickness, and some Google Pixel phones are among the first to get it.

The feature uses your phone’s accelerometer and gyroscope. When the car turns, brakes, or speeds up, the dots move with it, so what’s happening on the screen lines up a little better with what your body feels. That mismatch between your eyes and your inner ear is what can leave people nauseous, dizzy, headachy, or just generally unwell.

Because Motion Assist is built into Android, those visual cues can show up across the interface, including in the status bar and notifications. That gives it wider reach than a third-party app. You can also tweak the opacity, shapes, and colors, turn Motion Assist on from Quick Settings, or have it kick in automatically when you’re in a moving vehicle.

If you tend to scroll, read, or reply to messages on the road, this looks like an update worth paying attention to. Motion sickness affects about one in three people, by some estimates. Survey data also says 46% of adult passengers have dealt with carsickness at some point in the past five years. Apple rolled out a similar iOS 18 feature, Vehicle Motion Cues, and early reports there have been encouraging, including research that points to 30% to 50% less nausea on longer drives, though Google still doesn’t have much real-world data out yet.

Motion Assist is rolling out now with Android 17, and Google Pixel phones are among the first devices getting access.