I’ve now spent some time playing with WFS. It’s very limited which I imagine you all know.
A frustration is that there is information within the watch for many things, such as local sunrise/sunset for example, but only a few of them are accessible as tags. And it’s a seemingly random selection.
So:
Is there a way to access additional information within the ‘tags’ environment other than what is documented? I’m certain the answer is no.
What other ways exist to program the watch, outside of using WFS? I’m a competent programmer familiar with most modern development languages. But no idea where to start with this.
I haven’t tried this myself, but when reading about creating watches for Wear OS I come across this site. Seems to be a guide to api:s for creating watches with custom code. Perhaps it will help you in some way
I have only had a brief look at Android Studio . I know that people working in Kotlin can make apps to run on watches . As far as I know no one has managed to extend the WFS TAGS beyond what we have been given . The seeming restrictions are mostly down to Licencing . Any thing smarter has to be composed on another Platform making APK I think .
Yes. I believe you’re correct. It’s frustrating that the simple data I want to access, sunrise and sunset, are not accessible.
I also don’t understand why the raw data from other sensors, such as skin temperature, are not available - either to the developer, or even in Samsung Health.
I would truly Love Sunrise and Sunset Data. I have stuff I made elsewhere that I can not port here yet . We have very nice Moon phase data . We have time zone compensation . We have UTC .Sadly I am not smart enough to put them together for SR SS . I am certain it is possible . I am not a Mathamatician meary a Technician .
I think I am right in saying we have Watch Battery Temprature we could use for Fun but not Health Assessment . Perhaps we could start a Topic with Votes for SR SS.
Definitely. You can calculate SR/SS to within an hour but you need latitude. Also, the calculation, has a lot of elements (ask ChatGPT for the method) and without the ability to do the calculation and save the result in a variable, then use the time, modified by the variable in a tag expression, your tag expression will become unmanageable.
Also, my other Real annoyance is that you can’t change the parameters of an image, such as opacity, using a tag!
Like Peter says you can definitely manipulate the opacity using the Tag expressions.
In fact, it’s something watchface designers should be comfortable using, if they want to add interesting features such as:
Making a custom battery meter.
Making the colon tick on and off every half minute, like a real digital watch.
Making an indication that shows 12H (AM/PM) mode or 24H.
Making an image that appears whenever there is an unread notification
And so on…
As for the Sunrise/Sunset:
This is handled by complications. Custom data that are taken from the internet (read NON locally) or anything that isn’t handled by WearOS itself, are handled by complications.
There used to be a native Sunrise/Sunset complication that WearOS used to have and you could set it as a default complication with WFS. After Wear 3.5, Google depreciated it and it no longer works.
WFS is meant to be an accessible designer software to streamline the process of making watchfaces.
If you want to add some novel features, consider using an IDE such as Android Studio and learning Java or Kotlin.
@kevinbuckley70 . Which WFS are you on . I am still using 1.3.13 . Opacity is on of my Favourite ways of switching things on and off . I have found it Flawless . I can not comment on 1.4.20 .
That looks like Galaxy Watch for Tizen which doesn’t work for Watch4 onwards. For Watch4 onwards you have to use Galaxy Watch Studio which is significantly dumbed down.
Trust me it is WFS (the window for tags on GWD/GWS is triggered by small triangle in the corner of the value field), and in the field where the 100% can be seen you have to point or click first to see the button for opening tags window.
There doesn’t seem to be any little yellow triangle (v1.4.20 on Windows). Accessing the tag button is achieved by just clicking in the white space area of the value field.
Yes. I can load sunrise/sunset as a complication. But I want to use the value to enable other custom functionality within the design.
I’m probably going to have to go to Android Studio. I can already program in Java amongst other things and made a few Android apps in the past.
I was led to WFS because when I first got the watch (Watch5) as searching the net led me to the Tizen Studio which looks pretty good. But I soon realised that is for watches before Watch4 and I couldn’t use it. I’ve been playing with WFS but whilst it is pretty good for easy ‘code free’ stuff, it’s quite frustrating if you want to do any functionality which is vaguely complex.
Sorry, I confused you with my description in brackets how would it look if my screenshot was made in GWS, which it was not. It was made on WFS, that was set into dark mode for less strain for the eyes, when tinkering with it at night.
If you are familiar with Android Studio, then it would be probably pointless to direct you at another option for watchfaces like Facer.io, which can easily work with limited set of weather info (from another third party source).
Sorry, just to be clear. Are you saying I CAN adjust opacity in WFS? Even in dark mode I don’t see any yellow triangle and clicking anywhere in opacity only allows me to either change the number or jog the value up and down. There is no tag button like there is for, for example, to adjust position.
Later, when I get home, I try to install newest WFS on my other PC and check this, if it still works the same. But yes that is the spot (forget the triangle in corner, it only related to GWD/GWS). When pointing or clicking there, the blue button “Tags” should appear, same as it should on other settings, like size or placement.
