This clever Wear OS app turns your Pixel Watch into a live flight radar

Pixel Watches just got a live flight tracker thanks to a new app.

Flight Scanner is a new app that turns any Wear OS watch into a live aircraft radar, tracking nearby planes and showing important flight information directly on your wrist. It’s a niche but clever app for aviation fans who want to know what's flying overhead without having to reach for their phone.

Jay Bonggolto, Published 08/02/2026 🇩🇪

Wear OS watches already have the capability to handle calls, navigation, payments, and fitness tracking, but they've just gained a decidedly more aviation-nerd-friendly job, thanks to a new app that allows you to spot the planes flying over your head.

Flight Scanner is a new Wear OS app that turns compatible smartwatches into a miniature live aircraft radar, created originally by developer Alex Davenport for Garmin watches after getting tired of having to get his phone out every time an interesting plane flew over. Now, that same concept has made its way to Wear OS.

The app displays a radar-like view around your current GPS location and plots nearby aircraft in real time, using data from Airplanes.live. Tap on a plane to find out more about it, including its callsign, aircraft type, altitude, speed, registration, squawk code, and direction.

You can also zoom and pan around the radar, search for aircraft by callsign, pin certain planes, and apply filters for helicopters and military aircraft, while hiding landed or smaller planes. The app also uses sleep behavior that is friendly to battery life, rather than trying to keep the radar going all the time.

Flight finder feature in the Flight Scanner app

Radar-style display in the Flight Scanner app

Aircraft pinning tool in the Flight Scanner app

Davenport is already working on some additional features. Airport lookup and runway views are on the way, and departure and destination information seems to be built out and awaiting clearance for the Google Play update process. A Wear OS Tile with nearby aircraft could also come later, similar to the Glance feature on the Garmin version of the app.

Flight Scanner is available on Google Play for a one-time fee of $2.99 (pricing varies by region). Some Pixel Watch owners have seen compatibility warnings when clicking through from a phone to the listing, but searching directly from the watch’s Play Store seems to work.

For those wishing to see what is flying in the sky this very second, flightradar24.com could prove useful. It's free but may take a while to load depending on your location and the number of planes to display.