Would it be possible to increase animation framerate to 30 or even 60fps? Aesthetically this is much more pleasing to the eye, the current limit of 15 makes animations look clunky and the false appearance that the watch face is hammering the CPU and it can’t keep up or something. I have several animations which look so much better and silky smooth when run at a full frame rate.
Could we please get a couple of TAGs for sunrise and sunset? I don’t want to use the complication, just the raw time, so I can display them at the appropriate angle/points around an arc covering the time throughout the day. Thx!
Hi,
I have been trying to figure out if it’s possible to give my watch face multiple style palettes, wherein each style would contain an indexed color palette instead of just a single color? Instead of just making a theme “green” or “red”, I want to make it up of several complimentary colors instead.
E.g. Theme #1 might use colors such as these, and I could assign colors as an index of this palette, so index 1 for background would be grey, index 2 for hands would be mustard, index 4 for texts green, etc.:
And theme 2 might use a different palette, e.g. the below would change objects using index 2 to pink etc:
Is this possible, even with a bit of a hacky workaround?
Since this has been the standard for all previous Galaxy Watches I would assume this is a power use issue. However I will collect these suggestions and submit them to the development team now that we have a new release.
I doubt it is possible, that is a weather function and not all Wear 3 OS watches would have that. But I can ask for it.
Ron
Samsung Developer Relations
I believe we already have a paired styles request (fonts and background for example) but if not I’ll get back to you.
If I don’t understand correctly let me know.
Ron
Samsung Developer Relations
Complications: prefer TEXT + ICON layout over TEXT + TITLE
I think this could be easy for WFS team to achieve.
Most of the complications apps are building complications with setText, setTitle, setMonochromaticIcon
Native build watch face are getting complications data and if there is sufficient space, then correct layout is showed.
Problem with WFS is that if we add all layouts to SHORT_TEXT / RANGED VALUE / LONG_TEXT type complications, TEXT + TITLE is always preferred even if there is no space for title (title becomes cropped)
Easy solution would be to always prefer TEXT + ICON layout when all three text, title, icon are provided. (Maybe WFS made watch faces are using return function, in that case only placing TEXT + ICON layout code above TEXT + TITLE.
Tweaking watch face code we can get rid of this:
And achieve this:
App used: Simple Weather App from Simple App Projects
Most apps with complications provide text + title + icon.
Maybe this can be fixed within next WFS version ?
Tomas
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A help menu with a link to online documentation
String operations would be nice to add as well. For example: STRING.LEFT([HOUR_0_23_Z]),1 to get the first digit of the time.
Or formatting could be kept simple: LEFT, RIGHT, MID
With this it would be so much easier to achieve time formatting where non monospaced fonts make the time change look cheap. I know we could use bitmap fonts, but that’s so much more resourceful.
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I do think this is different to just paired style requests, this is more about having an indexed palette that can be swapped out by the user just like they choose a different style now. The key difference being this would allow you to assign the color style index to objects and swap the whole palette.
From a design perspective this would allow some much more creative use of colors and better interfaces instead of watch faces that only have one primary color throughout. Thx!
I believe you can edit fonts, just open the drop down, select the element (text or title) and you can modify the font, size, placement, etc.
facepalm, thanks, boy do I feel dumb for not expanding the complication group out. Thanks.
Thre should be a way (as there is with GWS) to test different languages in WFS - this is required to test how day-of-the-week and month names will look on a watch face as some abbreviations seem to be longer than others.
In GWS you could set the default language for a field and the run window would display the field (e.g day of the week) in the selected language - a bit clunky, but it worked. If I do this with WFS, the run window always shows English.
Alternatively, are the abbreviations used for each language option, say for the date format “DAY_WEEK_S” published anywhere (can’t find this on developer.android.com)? This would also be of significant assistance.
E.g.
English: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat Sun
French: Lun., Mar., Mer., Jeu., Ven., Sam., Dim.
and so on…
Ability to test…tag expressions
WFS provides a good number of tags which can be used to manipulate and display data. Most of these tags are related to time values and can therefore be set within WFS and displayed in the run window by changing the time/date values in WFS.
However there are other tags which cannot be changed within WFS, a good example being [LANG_LOC] which is set to “ko_KR”. It would be very helpful when testing a watch face during development if WFS allowed the developer to set this tag to be any valid value such that tag expressions using it can be exercised.
This also goes for some other tags such as BATT_* (with the exception of BATT_PER).
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They do have this on the To Do list.
Alternatively, are the abbreviations used for each language option, say for the date format
There used to be published in an ICU library but they redid the library and I can’t find them any more.
Ron
Samsung Developer Relations
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Can you maybe make the color selection when it comes to styles to not limit to a few colors but give the user the option when selecting to have something like a color picker and i mean not just on the WFS but the actual user to have the choice to pick whatever color he likes.
something like this
It is just a request if it’s easy maybe you can do it if not then its not that important.
Also this one as well.
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.
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.
That would probably have to be something for the Wear OS but we can add it.
Ron
It was suggested that I come here to request features. I have a number of things that I’ve seen that would be amazing if they would be implemented. As a developer, I know that nearly all suggestions are technically possible but sometimes it can be denied by management or just plainly too difficult to add or change. But if I can offer bribes in the form of skittles or memes, I can certainly come through.
I should note that I’ve only made two watch faces so far and I’m absolutely certain that some of my suggestions would be things I just don’t know yet. Please feel free to flog me and say “You can find this information (here)”.
Aaand here we go:
PLEASE add a lot more to the documentation. So much of it is so scarce that I cannot figure out what I really need to do in order to achieve what I know is possible.
Light theme => increase contrast ratio - it’s currently not high enough to see clearly. The current UI appears to be geared for dark theme where things show much better. On that, kudos on making a dark theme that doesn’t burn itself into my eyes. Thank you so much for that!
Can icons like the “lock ratio” icons be made larger or darker with more distinct state differences? (locked/unlocked) I’m on a 38 inch ultrawide (21:9) monitor with a resolution of 3840x1600 and I find myself getting up to the screen to see certain things
On that note, can you make smaller UI elements either larger or easier to see? Because a 21:9 38 inch monitor makes everything small
Circular progress bars => allow to set angle rotation, angle coverage (not just 1/4, 1/2, 100% increments). Let’s say that I want a curved progress bar that covers only 33% (one third) of the watch face bezel area. I currently don’t see that we can do that.
Is there an easy way to change the curvature of the WHOLE progress bar. For example, if I want it to be half an ellipse, is there an easy way to do that? Or maybe a square? Or a pentagon? Or hexagon, for those looking to make very nice futuristic faces or technical looking features?
Allow zoom more than current max. Again, my monitor settings are high and it would be great if we could zoom in just a little more.
Allow picking transparent colors (or at least an alpha slider for custom transparency levels) on all objects and “sub objects” of components that have multiple components. Currently, some items just lack an alpha layer entirely.
Allow picking foreground and background colors (including transparent) independently for any object, esp. progress bars. This would allow not only for “reverse” progress bars where we don’t have to play with the range values (thus making it awkward to use for meters that aren’t in the 1/4, 1/2, 100% ranges) but also allows us to have meters that shows off background features while having a “countdown” progress bar of a custom coverage area. Currently, the best I’ve managed is to play with the ranges and put it against a solid color background and pick a color that matches the background. If you want a great visual example, look up the “Goldeneye watch face” from the N64 video game and notice the two side meters that measure player health and shields). In an example like that, I have an image for a meter and then I am using a progress bar over 1/2 the face with the color set to the background and 0% opacity for the background and set to “countdown” through manipulated ranges. The result is a meter with a non-standard range of face coverage that counts down however it can only be used against a solid color background. This works great for heart rate where anything over a certain level isn’t really something we want but if we want a whole range (like a steps counter), it’s a different story. See image.
Ruler and snap guides should be on a per-project basis so that I do not have to reset them and then re-reset them between projects.
Allow for custom angle on the ends of progress bars to match any radial angled meter we devise. So if we have a custom meter (per above) that covers 33% (one third) of the watch face and we use a progress bar like I’ve described above and can actually get it to match the coverage area (or use color tricks like above), the flat meter “end-cap” doesn’t match actual angle measurements from the center of the watch like you would expect. The angle of the flat edge is… off. And I have yet to figure out how to adjust that specifically though I can see how I can make a really weird curve overall.
On that note, if I could do an ellipsoid shaped meter, that would be amazing.
Attempting to use a drag handle on a progress bar with “non-standard” values for shape makes it fly across the screen while resizing. These values should give you a starting point for reproduction:
“Tap blocker” objects or polygon shapes to allow us to “mask” off “internal” areas of a larger image used for meters and progress that we want tap capacity on but not on all areas.
Selecting multiple layers of mixed state (such as hide/show) should show both states as available options with either a check by the option that the majority have or a greyed check showing the state of the currently right clicked item.
On that note, a keyboard shortcut for that would be fabulous.
In a perfect wishlist, a way to bind our own shortcuts.
The top pixel or so of the title bar of the application does not behave like the rest of the title bar in regards to snap/drag. Meaning if I have the window maximized and slam the mouse pointer to the top of the monitor and drag to unsnap from a maximized state, it does not work. I have to be within some invisible border area to use that feature of windows.
Please allow right click on the taskbar button of the software so that I can access things like “close” and other built in windows features.
Be able to specify frame count for frames in animations. If I have 2 states for an animation, it would be swell if I could say “show frame 1 for 7 seconds, frame 2 for 7 seconds” instead of having 15 frames to specify.
On that note, some clarity to the animation features - I’m still not 100% clear on how it works since I know it’s 15 frames per second and 7 frames should be about half a second but I apparently have that wrong somehow and my animation looks like the matrix is going insane.
It would also be grand for some kind of option to handle an even number of frames per second for ease of math (on/off animations every half second, for example)
Can you fix the “close dirty file” dialog? It asks if we want to save but then presents Ok/No/Cancel instead of Yes/No/Cancel. This isn’t a normal software behavior/prompt.
The undo feature (ctl-z) does not seem to behave consistently. Sometimes it walks backwards like you would expect (one action at a time) and sometimes (especially when working with the timelines), it will undo a whole batch of changes.
You have a feature that allows me to hold the space bar to drag the zoomed view around (just like in photoshop) which puts me into photoshop mode but zoom is ctl-scroll unlike photoshop (which is alt+zoom) and that breaks my immersion into the software (my flow). I don’t know if it’s an issue for anyone else but I have to explicitly remind myself that it’s not photoshop controll.
A sample of icons would be fabulous. There are sample resources such as indexes and watch hands in the program directory but no icons. Some simple ones like steps and heart would be incredible. They could be files in the directory, sure but also having a button somewhere in the program for ALL of those samples would be amazing. Currently, we kind of have to remember where they are in the Program Files directory.
And on that note, when adding a complication, some of them appear with a built in hexagon. I would absolutely adore the ability to have that as an actual icon for some reason.
I know that was a lot, thank you!
You have some good suggestions and I will use most of them. A few of the progress bar suggestions are possible like the 1/3rd progress bar just set the Angular distance for 120 degrees instead of 360.
Some things you need to do as a designer for example you could create your own square progress bars using 4 progress bars the range of each one is a side.
Windows has a magnifying app you might want to learn how to use that on such a large screen.
Animation is optimized for 15 frames per second I think changing that is hard. You just need to adjust your animations for now but I will pass that on.
Because many icons are copyrighted there is an licensing issue if Samsung distributes them.
Watch Face Studio is not meant to be a “image design tool” so some things will never be implemented.
Watch Face Studio is documented HERE and there are some code labs. Our support team usually does one blog a month as well search
There is a Code Lab for tags HERE
Ask here and you will get lots of help from others and myself. This is a very generous group of Designers.
Finally, I kind of like the OK I get a smile every time I close it for that little bit of rebellion snuck in past the translators.
Ron
Samsung Developer Relations
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