A new Android feature now reaching users has been shown to cut down on motion sickness — sometimes wiping it out entirely — when you’re staring at a phone in a moving car. Google calls it Motion Assist, and the resemblance to Apple’s Motion Cues, which debuted in 2024, is close enough that nobody inside Google is bothering to deny it.
Rollout of the Android 17 feature looks staggered, with some Pixel phones getting it first.
Why the dots aren’t a gimmick
There’s real science behind it. Car sickness sets in because your gaze is locked on a display that never moves while your inner ear is busy registering every turn, every stop, every burst of acceleration. Your eyes report stillness. Your inner ear says otherwise. Your stomach has to choose.
Motion Assist pulls data from the accelerometer and gyroscope in your handset to draw dots along the edges of the screen that shift in sync with the vehicle. Take a right turn and the dots sweep leftward. Hit the brakes and they slide forward.
I’ve been living with this feature, on the other platform
Take it from me: the technology delivers. I’m a committed vanlifer, which means plenty of hours spent on my MacBook and iPhone in the passenger seat while we head toward the next stop. The anti-nausea setting is the only reason that’s workable. Turn it off and I simply can’t handle it.
My wife has come around as well — and she was the doubter.
What Google lets you change
Opacity of the motion indicators is adjustable, and there’s a selection of shapes and colors to pick from. For a first attempt at something like this, that’s an unusually generous amount of control.
You can have it kick in on its own whenever it senses vehicle movement, or flip it on manually through a Quick Settings tile. Automatic is the setting that counts, since by the time you remember you wanted it, you generally needed it several minutes ago.
Whether you can get it yet
Now the caveat. It still hadn’t shown up on a pair of Pixel devices we tested, which says plenty about just how limited this rollout currently is.
Should you be among the lucky ones, Motion Assist lives in your Google Settings, filed under Your Profile and All Services. Check for it now instead of waiting until nausea hits in the passenger seat, since digging through menus on a twisting road is precisely the scenario the feature was built to spare you.