How to Install and Make Custom Watch Faces for Android Wear

Posted on by

If there is one thing I love about the wearable capability, it is the replacement of new watch faces. While many companies either don’t allow users to create their own watch faces or require some programming skill, there are a few workarounds in Android Wear, and they’re awesome. If you want to create your own watch face that no one else has, read on. Even iOS users can do it!

I am an iPhone user with an Android Wear watch. Why? Because I think the Apple Watch is a confusing and pointless technology. While Google’s Android Wear platform does a little less on iOS, I’ve focused on making wearables a lot better and in fact it seems to work and stay paired with my phone more reliably. But no matter which platform you prefer on your wrist, Android Wear is the only device that offers easy options for creating your own watch faces. Gizmodo details some of them that Android users can easily use, but in this post, we’ll go over a process that even iPhone users can use.

The iPhone dilemma

If you go to the Android Wear app on your iPhone, you’ll find the watch faces section right at the top. When you tap the MORE button, you can select watch faces on your device, or tap Get more watch faces at the bottom of the screen to sync more options. Unlike your friends with Android phones, it does not have access to the watch face you can find in the Google Play store. Google does offer some interesting options, but I find most of them too restrictive. They look nice, but few provide useful information and none display the current temperature.

How to download watch faces on Android Wear

I was not satisfied with my options, and as with Google products, you can usually find a workaround for most of the restrictions. If you want to install a custom watch face on your device, you can download any APK file directly to your Android Wear smartwatch. Once you have it ready, you just need to follow a few steps (and have a computer to do them):

  1. Download and install Android Developer Tools on your OS X, Windows, or Linux computer. You actually only need the adb command line tool, but this is the fastest way to get everything set up correctly so that your computer and watch can communicate. (If you want to do it hard so you can install less, download the adb and Google USB drivers . You will also need to download the drivers for your smartwatch. Here you are on your own.
  2. Turn on developer mode on your watch just like you do on an Android phone: open Settings, go to the About section, and keep tapping the Build Number section until the watch tells you that you are a developer.
  3. Back in the Settings menu, navigate to the newly available Developer Options section and enable ADB Debugging. (Downloading unpublished files will be over USB, so you can turn off Bluetooth debugging if you like.)
  4. Take the APK of the watchface you want to download unpublished and change its extension from .apk to .zip.
  5. Extract this “zip” file you just created and find the real APK file in it. You should find it in / res / raw.
  6. If you haven’t already, connect your watch to your computer via USB.

These five steps will get you most of the way, but things change slightly depending on your platform. Select your computing platform below to complete the unpublished download process. If you’re on Linux, the OS X instructions should be pretty much the same, so you can simply follow them and replace “Macintosh HD” with the name of your boot disk and Terminal with your preferred command line application.

On OS X

  1. Open Terminal (in Macintosh HD → Applications → Utilities) and connect your watch to your computer via USB.
  2. Enter this command (but don’t press enter!): ./adb install
  3. After this command, add the location of the APK you want to download (either by entering the path manually or by dragging and dropping the APK file into the terminal window). The command should look something like this: ./adb install /Macintosh\ HD/locationofapk/apk.apk
  4. When you get it right, hit Enter and let adb do its thing. The entire download process for unpublished files will take about a minute. Don’t worry if you don’t get immediate feedback. It may take some time to find out what happened.

On Windows

  1. Open a command prompt by typing cmd in search. To make sure everything is working fine, type adb devices so the computer can see your clock. If possible, you will most likely receive a serial number labeled “device” next to it.
  2. Enter this command (but don’t press enter!): adb install
  3. After this command, add the location of the APK you want to download unpublished (either by entering the path manually or by simply dragging and dropping the APK file into the Command Prompt window). The command should look something like this: adb install C:\Users\BestUserEver\locationofapk\apk.apk
  4. When you get it right, hit Enter and let adb do its thing. The entire upload process for unpublished files should take about a minute. Don’t worry if you don’t get immediate feedback. It may take some time to find out what happened.

This may sound like a lot of work, but it’s actually very easy if you know what you are doing. Once you’ve installed a watch face, you can select it directly on the watch (press and hold the watch face to open the selection screen) or select it in the Android Wear app. The app will display its name, but not necessarily a preview image, so if you download a lot of watch faces, you may have difficulty distinguishing between them. Fortunately, this is not a problem on your Android Wear device.

Where to get new watch faces and how to create your own

While downloading any of the many awesome third-party watch faces is cool, what’s even cooler is downloading a watch face you made yourself on the side. I wanted weather on my phone, but I also wanted a little personality, so I put together pixel art (with the help of the talented Sean Wharton ) of my boyfriend and me (and his dog – see the top image of this post for the finale. Results). I now have a stunning personalized watch face (which you see above). If you want to do this too, you have several options:

  • Use the already installed Android developer tools to write it from scratch. These instructions may help , but this is obviously the most time consuming option you could choose.
  • Use WatchFacePro to create your own. While the tool itself isn’t great and you have many limitations, this web app can instantly and for free generate a simple, informative, and even animated watch face. However, it does not have the ability to display the weather.
  • If you have an iPhone, DO NOT use an Android app to create one, such as these great and previously mentioned options offered by Gizmodo . If you had an Android phone, they would work great. You could probably get it to work if you had an Android device to paint a face on, but transferring it to an iPhone paired watch would be more of a problem than it’s worth.

Unless you’re a seasoned Android developer (in which case, why are you taking advice from me?), You’ll find more robust watch faces by downloading third-party options. However, creating your own unique designs can often trump additional features. Try both and see what you like! Regardless of the outcome, it’s really fun.

More…

0
Hacks

Leave a Reply