The latest release of Watch Face Studio(WFS) supports the new way of developing watch faces, which was introduced at Google I/O 2023. Please visit here! (Watch Face Format | Android Developers)
The previous versions of WFS require a very complicating procedure to provide the solutions to problems of device operations or the update for the improved performance or battery usage, such as rebuilding the existing projects, uploading to store, and waiting for customers to update to new ones.
However, with this new technology introduced in the WearOS 4 and the latest WFS, this procedure gets simple. Most of the device related operations and performances can be fixed or improved by updating device firmware. WFS users may focus only on designing and update the version of the app to provide the improved design.
Don’t be disappointed that there is no device that supports WearOS 4 yet.
The watch face packages built by the latest WFS v1.4.13 also fully supports the compatibility with the existing WearOS 3.x, and therefore, you just rebuild your app under WFS v1.4.13 then upload to the store. The app downloaded from the store works compatibly and naturally with the new technology provided by the WearOS 4 when the customer’s device is upgraded to WearOS 4.
We’d like to invite you to download new WFS and be the first one to use it.
Will you share here the information of the app that you build under new WFS and upload to the store, along with the store information?
This information may contribute to the faster stability of this new technology.
Forgive me I don’t know what that auto brightness adjustment is and I don’t see any bug reports about this in the Support system.
Can you expand on what you mean?
If the movement effect is “Jump Hour” then that is what it should do.
Assuming that isn’t it can you give more details of what you mean be freezing, for how long minutes or until the next hour tick and do you have any customized watch hands or such.
Hi Ron, thanks for your answer. I am using my own watch faces and they were working without any problems. I had to re install the watch an my new phone using the last WFS 4.13 without making any changes on my watch faces. The hour hand is freezing to next full hour and it is set to be normal in the configuration.
Furthermore, I need any description or link to add weather compilation to my watch faces. I will be very grateful if you can help me in this point.
Thanks
I’ll see if I can report this as a bug in WFS 1.4.13 Beta. Unfortunately you can’t change your .wfs project back to WFS 1.3.13 I hope you had a backup.
I believe you can use a Ranged Value for some weather but short text and long text all have weather complications. You can tap on them to open the full weather app.
Using the complication is to open the app is probably better than a button but if that is your choice I can help you with that.
Same problem here with my Galaxy Watch 5. I created a new watch face using WFS 1.4.13 beta. It seems that the hour hand isn’t updated immediately if the watch screen returns from standby. If you have AOD activated then the hour hand works fine - otherwise it takes several retries to update the hour hand. What helps is switching the watch face to another one and then switching it back.
Another issue: I have placed a text field with heart rate measuring by expression tag (continously is activated in watch settings) which now works without the Tap-to-measure-action. But what happens when I open the watch face customizations on the watch is that the measurement stops being updated when I return. Workaround again is switching the watch face to another one and back.
Next issue: after charging my watch the watch face was completely stuck (hour hand, minute hand, heart rate, …). Again switching the watch face a a workaround.
Maybe someone could report theses issues to the developers please?
I think the issue described by @frootloop19888 is more related to Galaxy Watch than to WFS. But I can reproduce it:
I have auto brightness activated on my Galaxy Watch 5. The watch adjusts the brightness correctly if the display is activated. When switching to AOD it keeps the brightness stored but then doesn’t adjust the brightness anymore while being on AOD. Only when returning from AOD to active display the brightness is adjusted again.
Another issue: I have placed a text field with heart rate measuring by expression tag (continously is activated in watch settings) which now works without the Tap-to-measure-action.
Workaround again is switching the watch face to another one and back.
This is a known issue with the WFS 1.4.13 Beta vewrsion.
Tap to measure is no longer supported. As you saw it is getting the HR read outs from Health Services/Samsung Health and is buggy at best with the current Wear version You will need to wait for Wear 4 before it is correctly read all the time.
Next issue: after charging my watch the watch face was completely stuck (hour hand, minute hand, heart rate, …). Again switching the watch face a a workaround.
Again this is a known issue. It is theorized that this is from a conflict with a complication but it is a known issue with the WFS 1.4.13 Beta version
I have auto brightness activated on my Galaxy Watch 5. The watch adjusts the brightness correctly if the display is activated. When switching to AOD it keeps the brightness stored but then doesn’t adjust the brightness anymore while being on AOD. Only when returning from AOD to active display the brightness is adjusted again.
I may be reading wrong but I think the Brightness setting is only Active mode
I don’t believe brightness is supposed to work in AOD mode it would use too much battery life. If it did it probably was a bug that was corrected in one of the recent updates.
Unlike the other bugs you reported this would not be a WFS issue.
If you see any other quirks please report them here and I’ll submit them to the tech support or report them directly to Technical Support
Hi, updated to the beta version and noticed similar issues. Sec. hand freezes time to time and have screen stutters going in and out of customize UI, watchface seems to load very slow too… Reverted back to v1.3.13… Thanks.
Good job on the 1.4.13 beta release! The new app bundles work flawlessly on my Wear OS 3 and Wear OS 4 emulators.
Unfortunately, on current hardware (with Wear OS 3) the watch faces are really slow and buggy:
Sometimes the complications break and the text becomes __placeholder. Icons aren’t working either.
Going into edit mode and back fixes it for a while.
Sometimes the always-on version is not shown when locking the device. Instead the normal view is visble and draining the battery. Unlocking the watch multiple times fixes this issue.
The performance is really bad. E.g. the animation for tapping a circle complication is sluggish (like only 3 out of 40 frames are shown choppily). No issue on emulator though.
The color picker in the face watch editor is hard to navigate on Wear OS 3. Swipping up and down changes the color palette once (way too slow). Using the physical crown is really hard because each tiniest tick changes the color palette (turn it by 10 degrees and you just skipped 10 colors).
I can’t test this on real hardware with Wear OS 4 since … well, there isn’t any hardware to test yet.
Hello friends.
When trying to update the watch face from a new version of GWS, the system throws an error like this when I load the .aab…
“Failed to process the downloaded App Bundle using the bundletool build-apks command. Make sure there are no errors in the bundle by running bundletool build-apks locally and try again.
Error: Watch face cannot have any files in the root of the package.”
PS.
The watch face was already created in the new version of GWS, passed the test and was approved, but now it can’t be updated … I don’t know what to do with it … Any ideas?
Hi, the problem lays in the new version. I reverted to the version 3.13 and all is working very good. Is there any way to open files saved by the new version because it is not possible to open my projects saved with the version 4.13 .
if you have some links of weather compilation examples, I will very grateful to send them to me.
Regards
The error being given is a failure of Play Store and is not an issue with Watch Face Studio 1.4.13 Beta. The WFS team has reported this to the store last week and have reaffirmed it this week.
I tried several of the Weather Apps that are available for Wear OS 3 and did not find any of them to have a complication that was helpful. Most if not al have minimum information andl just open the Weather App on my watch.
If you are looking for something like the https://openweathermap.org/ API you would need your own companion app. I don’t think the license allows for redistribution of data.
Be sure your watch is running Wear OS API 30 (System version 11)
I reported this but the support team does not understand the issues. Since I wasn’t able to duplicate the exact issue myself can you create a separate Support Request and a bit better descriptions?
I don’t think the color picker issue is WFS but if you haven’t seen it before please report this.
the display glitches and the poor performance are gone now. The only thing I changed was using the 12h/24h timeline to hide text instead of the [IS_24H] tag with opacity. That was my fault I guess, sorry.
Edit: My guess: these glitches only happen if your watch face is performing very poorly (too many tags and conditions in my case). But I got that fixed for my watch face so it is fine now.
The watch face setup (color picker and complication setup) should be a WFS issue. WearOS 4 has a built-in setup for the new Watch Face Format (that is pretty neat btw) but WearOS 3 has not. This means WFS is providing the needed binaries for WearOS 3.
