New Android 17 Feature Helps You Avoid Motion Sickness

Google has begun rolling out Motion Assist, an Android 17 feature that helps reduce motion sickness when you’re in a moving vehicle.

The feature adds small animated dots to the edges of your phone’s display. These move in real time based on your phone’s gyroscope, sliding forward when the car brakes, back when it accelerates, and left or right during turns. This helps your eyesight align with the body’s sense of motion and balance, helping to stave off nausea.

Google’s Motion Assist is similar to Apple’s Motion Cues, which Apple launched in 2024. Though neither feature is guaranteed to work for everyone who experiences motion sickness, it’s worth a shot if you struggle to look at your phone in a moving car, plane, train, or boat.

Motion Assist has started to appear on select Pixel phones running Android 17. I personally haven’t received it yet, but the feature is rolling out gradually. Once it’s available, you can activate it by going to Settings, tapping your profile, opening All Services, selecting Personal & Device Safety, and toggling Motion Assist on.

Alternatively, you can also try using Samsung’s Hearapy app. The app plays a precise 100Hz bass sine tone through connected earbuds for about 60 seconds before or at the start of travel. This low-frequency tone is supposed to stimulate the vestibular system in the inner ear, helping the brain process movement better and reducing the sensory mismatch that causes nausea. This is said to offer motion sickness relief for up to two hours, and it’s compatible with all headphones, not just those made by Samsung.