Your Pixel phone quietly got a new feature to help prevent motion sickness — here's how to use it

Motion sickness is not a fun thing to deal with. While I don’t personally struggle with it, I’ve known people who do, and it seems like it can be pretty unbearable at times. Thankfully, if you have a Pixel phone, you now have a clever new feature that can help keep motion sickness at bay.

The feature is called “Motion Assist,” and it works by displaying small dots around the edge of your screen that move according to your phone’s gyroscope and accelerometer. So, if you’re riding in a car, the dots will follow the same motion/movement as the vehicle.

Motion Assist could be a really valuable tool for a lot of people, and Google recently dumped it on Pixel phones without any clear explanation of how to use it or where to find it. So, let’s learn how to do that today.

What you need to access Motion Assist

In order to use Motion Assist, you’ll need an Android phone running Android 17. Eventually, no matter what phone you have — be it a Samsung or Motorola — you’ll be able to use Motion Assist so long as your device is updated to Android 17.

However, at least for now, Motion Assist is only available on Google Pixel phones. This will gradually change over time, but if you want to try Motion Assist right now, a Pixel is what you’ll need.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that even if you have a Pixel running Android 17, Motion Assist may still not be available. A couple of Android Authority team members with up-to-date Pixels don’t have the feature on their devices, suggesting that Motion Assist is part of a slow server-side rollout.

How to set up and use Motion Assist on your Pixel

So, you’ve got a Pixel with Android 17. What do you do next to find Motion Assist? As it turns out, the feature is really buried deep in your phone’s settings, and unless you know precisely where to look, you’d almost certainly never find it.

1. Open the Settings app on your phone.
2. Tap your name at the top of the page.
3. Tap All services.
4. Scroll down the page until you see Personal & device safety.
5. Under this section, tap Motion assist.
6. Tap the toggle next to Start in a moving vehicle.

Now, whenever your phone detects that you’re in a moving vehicle, Motion Assist will automatically turn on and display those moving dots on your screen. That’s all there is to it.

However, that’s not all you can do on this page. If you want to make accessing Motion Assist much easier, tap Add tile to Quick Settings, choose which tile size you’d like to add, and now you can access Motion Assist at any time from your Quick Settings panel.

You can also tap Customize at the bottom of the screen to fine-tune how Motion Assist looks. On this page, you can tweak the color, shape, and opacity of Motion Assist’s dots. There’s also a Randomize toggle that automatically changes these settings every few seconds while Motion Assist is running.

Not everyone with a Pixel will want or need to use Motion Assist, but for those who can benefit from it, it’s a pretty incredible feature to have — at least once you know how to get it set up.