Watch Face Studio Feature Requests (continued)

You can currently set up this type of functionality yourself. Just set up 2 graphics. One is a fully transparent png (hide) and the actual graphic you want to show.

Disadvantages: the blank png consumes memory.
Pros: you can set up more than just 0 or 1.

But if you only need an on-off switch, the software solution is of course good, especially when we could handle a GROUP with that. :thinking:

For Complications None is already an option
For Styles and Themes those also can contain an invisible element.
Iā€™m not sure what else you can do and still have the consistent User Interface that is the philosophy of Wear OS Powered by Samsung.

Ron
Samsung Developer Relations

  1. Groups hiding
  2. Miles / kilometers switch
  3. Two or more font styles.
    and many more usabilitiesā€¦

I currently do have plenty of watch faces with these ā€œinvisible tricksā€ to be able to turn off some of the elements but as @matze_styles4you wrote, empty images are consuming memory & power.

Thanks Iā€™ll add it to the request list but I donā€™t know if it is do-able. I canā€™t think of how the end user will know what a layer is :slight_smile:
I know there is some way in Play Store to bundle watch apps it may be another option.

Ron
Samsung Developer Relations

Thanks Ron ! :slightly_smiling_face: Now Iā€™m doing it like many other devs - giving names like ā€œWhite color On / Offā€. There are only two positions 1 On 2. Off. or vice versa. It uses fully transparent style which isnā€™t great for battery life. Also, itā€™s not applicable for letā€™s say, groups or texts.

just give us a complication for the samsung health things
like the 3 bar thing: steps, time, calories

how could you even not already did this? this is the obvioust thing :man_facepalming:
you build a watch that can track every **** but dont let us show it in custom watchfaces
very bad
[vulgarity edited]

We do they are in Small Image and Monochromatic Image complications. They are not listed because they are not compatible on all Wear OS Powered by Samsung Devices the user has to customize them.

Ron
Samsung Developer Relations

Theme colors is one of the greatest features we got with WFS. Just dropping a white bitmaps or object there and click the paint bucket, boom. However if we could have 2 sets of Theme Color Palettes in the Style tab that can be customized separately, this would be really great. It will minimize us to use images for custom colors and will open us to almost unlimited color combination and customization.

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I believe it is already on the request list but Iā€™ll check. Font Styles is on it for sure. Also, it would be nice if there was a theme within themes For example the user changed to Blue for a background it changed to Gold for the Font color

Ron

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Thatā€™s fantastic. Thanks in advance. I canā€™t imagine the creativity between developers with that feature.

Hi Ron,

Iā€™m posting this as a request for more usability of the phone shortcut. Not all users including me can memorize all the numbers in our contacts. It is more convenient to watch users if this phone shortcut leads to the Phone app(showing the recent contacts, dial pad icon and the contact icon) instead of just the dial pad. I know we can do it with custom app id however I have no idea it will work with lower Wear OS devices.

I donā€™t see these mentioned anywhere.

Iā€™d like to see more separation features for the normal watchface and the AOD, for example apply just the colors on the AOD and leave the normal watchface with the default color. Or delete an item in the AOD options but have it still be visible in the normal watchface, it feels really confusing to have separate items for the AOD.

And Iā€™d also like to see more app functions in the complications. With any of the complication options in WatchFaceStudio there are still less than the default ones that you can apply on the watch itself if you have it set on empty in WatchFaceStudio.

Iā€™d like to see more separation features for the normal watchface and the AOD, for example apply just the colors on the AOD and leave the normal watchface with the default color.

Use a separate background image for the AOD and that doesnā€™t use themes.

Or delete an item in the AOD options but have it still be visible in the normal watchface,

There is a show hide button on the layers menu You can turn it off for AOD

it feels really confusing to have separate items for the AOD.

You need to think of an AOD watch face as an entirely different watch face. The AOD needs to be minimalistic to keep battery life at a maximum

And Iā€™d also like to see more app functions in the complications. With any of the complication options in WatchFaceStudio there are still less than the default ones that you can apply on the watch itself if you have it set on empty in WatchFaceStudio.

WFS can only include app complications that are available for all watch brands That is why there is an app chooser complication. Use that and the user can set his app to open.

Hope this helps,

Ron
Samsung Developer Relations

I donā€™t know if works the same on LTE and BT devices. Why not just open contacts, I know it says favorite contacts but after the top 10 or so it shows all contacts and you can dial or text from that.

Ron

with the first one I meant the universal colors to be separate from the AOD and watchface
These icons:
image

But if the AOD could be considered as a different watchface, why can I not create or delete items separate from the normal watchface? Because of this, you cannot have a watch chosen complication on the AOD separate from the normal watchface.

My main issue is that I cannot have a complication have a different color on the AOD than on the normal watchface.

can there not be any documentation on the folder names of these application so that there will be some kind of workaround for this issue? I get that it supports other models than the galaxy watches, but the app chooser wonā€™t let me select other compications in the complication so that wonā€™t be a viable option for me.

Thanks for the reply

with the first one I meant the universal colors to be separate from the AOD and watchface

Those icons turn the theme colors on and off in the work window You canā€™t customize an AOD so if you want different colors you need to have a fixed item. If end users could chose themes on the AOD they could have burn in on the display and extreme battery use at a minimum.

But if the AOD could be considered as a different watchface, why can I not create or delete items separate from the normal watchface? Because of this, you cannot have a watch chosen complication on the AOD separate from the normal watchface.

You actually can create a different complication on an AOD watch face than on the normal one. Hide it on one and show a different one on the other. But it is very wrong to do so. Watch Wearers will expect to see the same complication in the same place and if they customize it expect the customization to be the same for normal and AOD. You could make both fixed and not allow customizations but it would probably still upset users. There is no way to customize the AOD version because it is overlaid in the way the watch customizations work.

My main issue is that I cannot have a complication have a different color on the AOD than on the normal watchface.

complications on AOD are frowned upon to say the least. They are a battery drain or not supported on AOD and you canā€™t customize them.

can there not be any documentation on the folder names of these application so that there will be some kind of workaround for this issue?

use the App ID
adb connect 192.168.xxx.xxx:5555 (your watch IP address & enable debugging)
adb shell
pm list packages

You will get an output list like this for all the apps on the watch
package:com.android.cts.priv.ctsshim
package:com.google.android.ext.services
package:com.android.providers.telephony

I cannot stress this enough. Avoid any and all items that appear to be customizable on an AOD unless it is for your own use.

Ron
Samsung Developer Relations

Thanks for the reply, this was all i needed to know. Good day to you!

Hello,

Is there a way when setting up complications to specify the borders when it comes to selecting them when customizing the watch face through the watch or the app?

For example if i setup 3-4 ranged complications and also turn the text curved when it is time to customize the watch face through my watch all the complications border will overlap because the curve of the text will count towards the borders making them overlap with each other and look a bit chaotic when it comes to selecting the complication. This has also been a reason for rejection of the watch face in the past.

I hope you understand what i mean.

Update: i added an actual screenshot of the complication screen of the watch to see how it looks like on a watch face i am currently working.

Normally they should not be overlapping to that extent but because of the curved text the area takes more space even though the actual text of the complications have a wide space between them.

Iā€™ll ask but I donā€™t think it is possible for complications. They are just a template for every complication of that type. But what you want to do is possible using an moving image and Tags. Ranged Values just cover the background.

Ron
Samsung Developer Relations

Hello, at the moment i am placing the ones occupying the most space below the ones that are smaller, if i know where to tap there is no issue, the problem is mostly visual as you can see on the attached image the user will need to guess where to tap for which complication to select and also i had a face rejected for this issue once. Not this time though.