Tag Archives: Wear OS

Build kids app experiences for Wear OS

Posted by John Zoeller – Developer Relations Engineer, and Caroline Vander Wilt – Group Product Manager

New Wear OS features enable ‘standalone’ watches for kids, unlocking new possibilities for Wear OS app developers

In collaboration with Samsung, Wear OS is introducing Galaxy Watch for Kids, a new kids experience enabling kids to explore while staying connected with their families from their smartwatch, no phone necessary. This launch unlocks new opportunities for Wear OS developers to reach younger audiences.

Galaxy Watch for Kids is rolling out to Galaxy Watch7 LTE models , with features including:

    • No phone ownership required: This experience enables the watch and its associated apps to operate on a fully standalone basis using LTE, and when available, Wifi connectivity. This includes calling, texting, games, and more.
    • Selection of kid-friendly apps: From gaming to health, kids can browse and request installs of Teacher Approved apps and watch faces onGoogle Play. In addition to approving and blocking apps, parents can also monitor app usage from Google Family Link.
    • Stay in touch with parent-managed contacts: Parents can ensure safer communications by limiting text and calling to approved contacts.
    • Location sharing: Offers peace of mind with location sharing and geofencing notifications when kids leave or arrive at designated areas.
    • School time: Limits watch functionality during scheduled hours of the day, so kids can focus while in school or studying.

Building kids experiences with standalone functionality enables you to reach both standalone and tethered watches for kids. Apps like Math Tango have already created great Wear OS experiences for kids. Check out the video below to learn how they built a rich and engaging Wear OS app.

Our new kids-focused design and content principles and developer guidance are also available today. Check out some of the highlights in the next section.

New principles and guidelines for development

We've created new design principles and guidelines to help developers take advantage of this opportunity to build and improve apps and watch faces for kids.

Design principle: Active and fun

Build engaging healthy experiences for children by including activity-based features.

A great example of this is the Odd Squad Time Unit app from PBS KIDS that encourages children to get up and be physically active. By using the on-device sensors and power-efficient platform APIs, the app is able to provide a fun experience all day and still maintain battery life of the watch from wakeup to bed time.

A circular timer display with a hexagonal background 'JUMP!' and '5 SECONDS REMAIN'. A gold hand points to the number 5. A colorful segmented ring surrounds the center of the timer.

Note that while experiences should be catered to kids, they must also follow the Wear OS quality requirements related to the visual experience of your app, especially when crafting touch targets and font sizes.

Content principle: Thoughtfully crafted

Consider adjusting your content to make it not only appropriate, but also consumable and intuitive for younger kids (including those as young as 6). This includes both audio and visual app components.

Tinkercast’s Two Whats?! And a Wow! app uses age-appropriate vocabulary and fun characters to aid in their teaching. It’s a great example of how a developer should account for reading comprehension.

A smartwatch face displays a cartoon bird with a speech bubble that says 'SWIPE TO VIEW YOUR OPTIONS!'. Yellow arrows point left and right with a large letter 'A' between them.

Development guidelines

New Wear OS kids apps must adhere to the Wear OS app quality guidelines, the guidelines for standalone apps, and the new Kids development guide.


Minimize impact on device battery

Minimize events that affect battery life over the course of one session. Kids use watches that provide important safety features for their parents or guardians, which depend on the device having enough battery life. Below are best practices for reducing battery impact.

      ✅ DO design for offline use cases so that kids can play without incurring network-related battery costs

      ✅ DO minimize tasks that require an internet or GPS connection

      🚫 DO NOT use direct sensor tracking as this will significantly reduce the battery life

      🚫 DO NOT include long-running animations


Choose a development environment

To develop kid-friendly apps and games you can use Compose for Wear OS, our recommended approach for building UI for Wear OS, as well as Unity for Android.

We recommend Unity for developing games on Wear OS if you’re familiar and comfortable with its workflows and capabilities. However, for games with only a few animations, Compose Animation should be sufficient and is better supported within the Android environment.

Be sure to consider that some Wear OS quality requirements may require custom Unity implementations, such as support for Rotary Input.

Originator’s MathTango showcases the flexibility and richness of developing with Unity:

A purple cartoon moose-like character with large antlers is displayed on a round smartwatch face. The name 'ISAAC' is shown below the character, along with the label 'NEW!'. A green arrow is visible in the top left corner of the screen.

Creating Watch Faces

Developing watch faces for kids requires the use of Watch Face Format. Watch faces should adhere to our content and design principles mentioned above, as well as our quality standards, including our ambient mode requirement.

The following examples demonstrate our Content Principle: Appealing. The content is relevant, engaging, and fun for kids, sparking their interest and imagination.

The Crayola Pets Watch Face comes with a great variety of customization options, and demonstrates an informative and pleasant watch face:

A circular watch face shows a cartoon character, the time (3:30), the date (Feb 10), and a battery indicator (89%).

The Marvel Watch Faces (Captain America shown) provide a fun and useful step tracking feature:

A round smartwatch face displays a cartoon Captain America, his shield, and the time (12:30). A step counter shows 650 steps. The Marvel logo is visible.

Kids experience publishing requirements

Developers looking to get started on a new kids experience will need to keep a few things in mind when publishing on the Play Store.

Expand your reach with Wear OS

Get ready to reach a new generation of Wear OS users! We've created all-new guidelines to help you build engaging experiences for kids. Here’s a quick recap:

With the Wear for Kids experience, developers can reach an entirely new audience of users and be part of the next generation of learning and enrichment on Wear OS.

Check out all of the new experiences on the Play Store!

AllTrails gains over 1 million downloads after implementing its Wear OS app

Posted by Kseniia Shumelchyk – Developer Relations Engineer

With more than 65 million global users, AllTrails is one of the world’s most popular and trusted platforms for outdoor exploration. The app is designed to be the ultimate adventure companion, so the AllTrails team always works to improve users’ outdoor experience using the latest technology. Recently, its developers created a new Wear OS application. Now, users can access their favorite AllTrails features using their favorite Android wearables.

Growing the AllTrails ecosystem

AllTrails has had a great deal of growth from its Android users, and the app’s developers wanted to meet the needs of this growing segment by delivering new ways to get outside. That meant creating an ecosystem of connected experiences, and Wear OS was the perfect starting point. The team started by building essential functions for controlling the app, like pausing, resuming, and finishing hikes, straight from wearables.

“We know that the last thing you want as you’re pulling into the trailhead is to fumble with your phone and look for the trail, so we wanted to bring the trails to your fingertips,” said Sydney Cho, director of product management at AllTrails. “There’s so much cool stuff we want to do with our Wear OS app, but we decided to start by focusing on the fundamentals.”

After implementing core controls, AllTrails developers added more features to take advantage of the watch screen, like a circular progress ring to show users how far they are on their current route. Implementing new user interfaces is efficient since Compose for Wear OS provides built-in Material components for developers, like a CircularProgressIndicator.

AllTrails’ mobile app warns users when they start to wander off-trail with wrong-turn alerts. AllTrails developers incorporated these alerts into the new Wear OS app, so users can get notified straight from their wrists and keep their phones in their pockets.

The new AllTrails Wear OS application has been super popular among its user base, and the team has received substantial positive feedback on the new wearable experience. AllTrails Wear OS app has had over 1 million downloads since implementing the Wear OS app.

'We’re seeing a lot of growth from Android users, and we want to provide them an ecosystem of connected experiences. Wearables are a core part of that experience.'— Sydney Cho, Director of product management at AllTrails

Streamlined development with Compose for Wear OS

To build the new wearable experience, AllTrails developers used Jetpack Compose for Wear OS. The modern declarative toolkit simplifies UI development by letting developers create reusable code blocks for basic functions, allowing for fast and efficient wearable app development.

“Compose for Wear OS definitely sped up development,” said Sydney. “It also gave our dev team exposure to the toolkit, which we’re obviously huge fans of and use for the majority of our new development.”

This was the first app AllTrails developers created entirely using Jetpack Compose, even though they currently use it for parts of the mobile app. Even with their brief experience using the toolkit, they knew it would greatly improve development, so it was an obvious choice for the Wear OS integration.

“Jetpack Compose allowed us to iterate much more quickly,” said Sydney. “It’s incredibly simple to create composables, and the simplicity of previewing the app in various states is extremely helpful.”



Connecting health and fitness via Health Connect

AllTrails developers saw another opportunity to improve the user experience while building the new Wear OS application by integrating Health Connect. Health Connect is one of Android’s latest API offerings that gives users a simpler way to consolidate and share their health and fitness data across applications.

When users opt-in for Health Connect, they can share their various health and fitness data between applications, giving them a more comprehensive understanding of their activity regardless of the apps tracking it.

“Health Connect allows our users to sync their AllTrails activity recordings, like hiking, biking, running, and so on, directly on their phone,” said Sydney. “This activity can then be viewed within Health Connect or from other apps, giving users more freedom to see all their physical activity data, regardless of which app it was recorded on.”

Health Connect streamlines health data management using simple APIs and a straightforward data model. It acts as a centralized repository, consolidating health and fitness data from various apps, simply by having each app write its data to Health Connect. This means that even partial adoption of the API can yield benefits.

AllTrails developers enjoyed how easy it was to integrate Health Connect, thanks to its straightforward and well-documented APIs that were “very simple but extremely powerful.”

moving asset of 3D Droid figure on the right gesticulating toward tect on the left that reads 'AllTrails +1million downloads since implementing the Wear OS app'

What’s ahead with Wear OS

Implementing a new Wear OS application did more than give AllTrails’ users a new way to interact with the app. It lets them put their phones back in their pockets so they can enjoy more of what’s on the trail. By prioritizing core functionalities like nearby trail access, recording control, and real-time alerts, AllTrails delivered a seamless and intuitive wearable experience, enriching UX with impressive user adoption and retention rates.

Get started

Learn more about building wearable apps with design and developer guidance for Wear OS.

Prepare your app for the new Samsung Galaxy foldables and watches!

Posted by Maru Ahues Bouza – Product Management Director, Android Developer

Yesterday’s Galaxy Unpacked event from Samsung debuted the latest in foldables, wearables, and more! The event introduced the Galaxy Z Fold6 and Z Flip6 and the Galaxy Watch7 and Watch Ultra - and it has never been easier to build apps that look great across all these screen sizes and types. To help you get your apps ready for the latest Android devices, we’re sharing how you can prepare your app for Wear OS 5 and how to build adaptive apps that scale across mobile, tablets, foldables and more!

Get your app ready for Wear OS 5

Samsung’s new Galaxy Watch lineup, including the Watch Ultra and Watch7, will be the first smartwatches powered by Wear OS 5, the latest version of the Wear OS platform. As Wear OS 5 is based on Android 14, this new platform version brings with it a number of developer-facing changes. To ensure your app is ready for the next generation of devices, start by testing your app on the Wear OS 5 Emulator!

Galaxy Watch Ultra (left) and Galaxy Watch7 (right)
Galaxy Watch Ultra (left) and Galaxy Watch7 (right)

Wear OS 5 brings the next iteration of the Watch Face Format, providing more features to create expressive, efficient and individual watch faces for your users. New watches launched with Wear OS 5 will only support third-party watch faces built with Watch Face Format, prioritizing the user experience. For more information on watch face compatibility, see this Help Center article.

As we gather momentum behind the Watch Face Format, we’re changing requirements for publishing watch faces on Google Play. Check out the watch face page for the latest guidance.

Build adaptive to scale across screen sizes and types

The latest in large screens and foldables are here, with the new Galaxy Z Fold6 and Z Flip6, so there is even more reason to ensure your app looks great across whatever screen size or folded state your users are engaging with. The best way to do that is to make your app adaptive - meaning your users get an optimal experience on all their devices. By building an adaptive app, you scale across mobile, tablets, foldables, desktop and more.

Galaxy Watch Ultra (left) and Galaxy Watch7 (right)
Galaxy Z Fold6

A great place to start when building adaptive apps is with the new Compose adaptive layout libraries. These libraries are designed to help you to make your UI look good across window sizes. From navigation UI to list/detail and supporting pane layouts, we’re providing composables to make building an adaptive app easier than ever.

Additionally, window size classes are the best way to scale your UI, with opinionated breakpoints that help you design, develop, and test responsive/adaptive layouts across various window sizes. Window size classes enable you to change your app layout as the display space available to your app changes, for example, when a device folds or unfolds, the device orientation changes, or the app window is resized in multi‑window mode.

Discover everything you need to know about building adaptive apps with the adaptive apps documentation; it will be continually updated with the latest and greatest tools and APIs to enable you to scale across screens!

Get started with Adaptive Apps and Wear OS

With these new devices, from the smallest to the largest, there are opportunities to build apps that excite your users on all their favorite Android screens. Apps like SoundCloud, Peloton, and more are already building experiences that scale across their user’s favorite screens!

Get building for Wear OS today by checking out Wear OS developer site and visiting the Wear OS gallery for inspiration. And scale your app across even more screens by building adaptive with the latest from Compose!

Top 3 Updates with Compose across Form Factors at Google I/O ’24

Posted by Chris Arriola – Developer Relations Engineer

Google I/O 2024 was filled with lots of updates and announcements around helping you be more productive as a developer. Here are the top 3 announcements around Jetpack Compose and Form Factors from Google I/O 2024:

#1 New updates in Jetpack Compose

The June 2024 release of Jetpack Compose is packed with new features and improvements such as shared element transitions, lazy list item animations, and performance improvements across the board.

With shared element transitions, you can create delightful continuity between screens in your app. This feature works together with Navigation Compose and predictive back so that transitions can happen as users navigate your app. Another highly requested feature—lazy list item animations—is also now supported for lazy lists giving it the ability to animate inserts, deletions, and reordering of items.

Jetpack Compose also continues to improve runtime performance with every release. Our benchmarks show a faster time to first pixel of 17% in our Jetsnack Compose sample. Additionally, strong skipping mode graduated from experimental to production-ready status further improving the performance of Compose apps. Simply update your app to take advantage of these benefits.

Read What’s new in Jetpack Compose at I/O ‘24 for more information.


#2 Scaling across screens with new Compose APIs and Tools

During Google I/O, we announced new tools and APIs to make it easier to build across screens with Compose. The new Material 3 adaptive library introduces new APIs that allow you to implement common adaptive scenarios such as list-detail, and supporting pane. These APIs allow your app to display one or two panes depending on the available size for your app.

Watch Building UI with the Material 3 adaptive library and Building adaptive Android apps to learn more. If you prefer to read, you can check out About adaptive layouts in our documentation.

We also announced that Compose for TV 1.0.0 is now available in beta. The latest updates to Compose for TV include better performance, input support, and a whole range of improved components that look great out of the box. New in this release, we’ve added lists, navigation, chips, and settings screens. We’ve also added a new TV Material Catalog app and updated the developer tools in Android Studio to include a new project wizard to get a running start with Compose for TV.

Finally, Compose for Wear OS has added features such as SwipeToReveal, an expandableItem, and a range of WearPreview supporting annotations. During Google I/O 2024, Compose for Wear OS graduated visual improvements and fixes from beta to stable. Learn more about all the updates to Wear OS by checking out the technical session.

Check out case studies from SoundCloud and Adidas to see how apps are leveraging Compose to build their apps and learn more about all the updates for Compose across screens by reading more here!


#3 Glance 1.1

Jetpack Glance is Android’s modern recommended framework for building widgets. The latest version, Glance 1.1, is now stable. Glance is built on top of Jetpack Compose allowing you to use the same declarative syntax that you’re used to when building widgets.

This release brings a new unit test library, Error UIs, and new components. Additionally, we’ve released new Canonical Widget Layouts on GitHub to allow you to get started faster with a set of layouts that align with best practices and we’ve published new design guidance published on the UI design hub — check it out!

To learn more about using Glance, check out Build beautiful Android widgets with Jetpack Glance. Or if you want something more hands-on, check out the codelab Create a widget with Glance.


You can learn more about the latest updates to Compose and Form Factors by checking out the Compose Across Screens and the What’s new in Jetpack Compose at I/O ‘24 blog posts or watching the spotlight playlist!

Scaling Across Screens with Jetpack Compose @ Google I/O ‘24

Posted by Maru Ahues Bouza, Product Management Director, Android Developer

Scaling Across Screens with Jetpack Compose

The promise of Jetpack Compose has always been that a modern toolkit designed to build native UI can help you build better apps faster and easier. As more and more of you - 40% of the top 1k apps, in fact - use (and love) Compose, we’ve been working to extend those benefits you’re seeing on mobile to also help you build across form factors as well. At Google I/O 2024, we announced a lot of new updates for Compose that help you build across form factors, including Compose APIs to support adaptive layouts, and new updates for Compose TV and Wear OS. From foldables to wearables to TVs, Compose is delivering features built to make Android development faster and easier. Apps like yours are already using Compose to support more screens with less code.

When thinking about layouts - think adaptive

Yesterday, we announced a new set of Compose APIs for building adaptive layouts, using Material guidance. These APIs, now in Beta, provide new layouts and components that adapt as users expect when switching between small and large window sizes.

The libraries provide 3 new scaffolds that adapt to the different window sizes that users can place apps in on different types of devices, from phones to foldables to tablets and more.

3 new libraries that adapt to different window sizes

NavigationSuiteScaffold

NavigationSuiteScaffold helps make it easier to build navigation UI by automatically complying with Material guidelines to provide your users with an optimal experience based on their window size.

Material guidelines recommend using a navigation bar at the bottom of compact width windows such as most phones and a navigation rail on the size of medium width and expanded width windows. It used to be up to each app individually to handle swapping between these components; now NavigationSuiteScaffold does this for you by switching between the components when the window size changes.

Navigation bar

ListDetailPaneScaffold & SupportingPaneScaffold

The new library also has ListDetailPaneScaffold and SupportingPaneScaffold, which help you implement canonical layouts that we recommend in many cases - list-detail and supporting pane.

On a phone, you usually organize your app flow through screens. For example, clicking on an item on your list screen brings you to the detail screen.

Detaileds screen

When adapting to different window sizes, it helps to think of your app in terms of panes rather than screens. For a compact window size class, such as a phone, you might only display one pane. For an expanded window size class, you might show two, or more panes at the same time. ListDetailPaneScaffold and SupportingPaneScaffold help you build apps that easily switch between one and two pane layouts.

Different screen layouts

You can learn more about all three of these APIs and how to get started with them in the “Building UI with the Material 3 adaptive library” and “Building adaptive Android apps” technical sessions.

“Integrating SupportingPaneScaffold was effortless and quick. It enabled us to seamlessly organize primary and secondary content on To-Dos. Depending on the window size class, the supporting pane adjusts the UI without any additional custom logic. Delighting our users regardless of what device they use is a key priority for SAP Mobile Start.”
- Software Engineer on SAP Mobile Start

Compose for Wear OS

In the past year, adoption of Compose for Wear OS has grown 200%, showcasing the ease with which Compose allows developers to build for the watch form factor.

Recently we’ve seen top apps such as WhatsApp, Gmail and Google Calendar built entirely using Compose for Wear OS, and it’s the recommended way for building user interfaces for Wear OS apps.

At this year’s Google I/O, Compose for Wear OS is graduating visual improvements and fixes from beta to stable.

In the past year, we’ve added features such as SwipeToReveal, to give users additional means for completing actions, an expandableItem, to enhance the use of the smaller screen and show additional information where needed, and a range of WearPreview supporting annotations, for ensuring your app works optimally across the range of device sizes and font scales.

Compose for Wear OS previews usage in Android Studio
Compose for Wear OS previews usage in Android Studio

You can get started with Compose for Wear OS by taking the codelab and learn more about all the latest updates for Wear OS via the technical session.

Compose for Android TV

At Google I/O ‘24, we announced that Compose for TV 1.0.0 is now available in beta. Compose for TV is our recommended approach for building delightful UIs for Android TV OS. It brings all of the benefits of Jetpack Compose to your TV apps, making building beautiful and functional experiences in your app much faster and easier.

The latest updates to Compose for TV include better performance, input support, and a whole range of improved components that look great out of the box. New in this release, we’ve added lists, navigation, chips, and settings screens. We’ve also updated the developer tools in Android Studio to include a new project wizard to get a running start with Compose for TV.

The new TV Material Catalog app lets you explore components in Compose for TV with different themes and layouts, and our updated JetStream sample shows how it all fits together.

TV Material Catalog app in action

You can get started with Compose for TV by checking out the dedicated blog, the technical session or taking a look at the integration guides.

Jetpack Glance

Jetpack Glance 1.1.0 is now available in RC, bringing a new unit test library, Error UIs, and new components.

We have also released new Canonical Widget Layouts on GitHub, which are built on top of the Glance components, to allow you to get started faster with a set of layouts that align with best practices.

The first set of layouts are delivered as code samples and a matching figma design kit on Android UI Kit with more layouts coming later this year.

Lastly, we have new design guidance published on the UI design hub—check it out!

A sample of Compose across screens: Jetcaster

A sample of Compose across screens: Jetcaster

We have updated Jetcaster—one of our Compose samples—to adapt across phone, foldable and tablet screens, and added support for TV, Wear and homescreen widgets with Glance. Jetcaster showcases how Compose helps you to build across a range of devices using a shared architecture in a single project.

See how you can extract elements such as your data layer, and design system, to promote reuse and consistency while delivering an experience tailored to different form factors. You can dive directly into the code on GitHub.

Get started with Compose across screens

With these updates to Compose to help you build for tablets, foldables, wearables and TVs, it is a great time to get started! These technical sessions are a great place to learn more about all the latest updates:

Learn more about how SoundCloud supported more screens using 45% less code with Jetpack Compose!

"Our mobile Compose skills transferred directly to Compose for other form factors, The concepts and most APIs are the same across form factors” - Vitus Ortner, Android engineer at SoundCloud

What’s new in Wear OS – I/O ’24

Kseniia Shumelchyk, Android Developer Relations Engineer, and Garan Jenkin, Android Developer Relations Engineer

Wear OS has seen incredible growth and advancements over the past year. With watch launches from Pixel, Samsung and more, Wear OS grew its user base by 40% in 2023 and has users in over 160 countries and regions. And Wear OS has expanded to more brands including OnePlus, OPPO and Xiaomi. This growth has been accompanied by heavy investments in performance and power optimization.

In this blog post, we’ll be highlighting some of the key updates we announced at Google I/O this year, so let’s dive in and explore the latest advancements in Wear OS and how you can make the most of the platform.

Wear OS 5 Developer Preview

We’re excited to be releasing the Developer Preview of Wear OS 5, the next version of Google’s smartwatch platform arriving later this year, based on Android 14. Central to our release of Wear OS 5 is continuing to enhance battery life.

Wear OS 5 brings performance improvements over Wear OS 4. Tracking your workout is now more efficient; for example, running a marathon consumes up to 20% less power on Wear OS 5 than on Wear OS 4.

Wear OS 5 brings battery improvements over Wear OS 4 for longer work out tracking
Wear OS 5 brings battery improvements over Wear OS 4 for longer work out tracking

To help you develop power-efficient apps on Wear OS, we’ve released a new guide to conserve power and battery. Be sure to take a look!

Wear OS 5 is based on Android 14, which brings with it a number of developer-facing changes. Check out what’s changed and try the new Wear OS 5 emulator to test your app for compatibility with the new platform version.

Changes in Watch Faces development

Last year we introduced the Watch Face Format as part of Wear OS 4, and we’ve had a fantastic response, with 30% of watch faces in Google Play already using the format. It’s been great to see what you’ve all been able to create so far using the Watch Face Format!

Sample Watch faces created with Watch Face Format
Sample Watch faces created with Watch Face Format

We’re excited to bring you the next iteration of the Watch Face Format with Wear OS 5.

Additionally, we’re announcing some changes to existing watch face development using Jetpack Watch Face APIs. Starting from Wear OS 5, we are introducing restrictions to complications for watch faces built with AndroidX or the Wearable Support Library that will apply to some data sources, as well as Google Play publishing limitations to new watch faces built with these libraries.

Check out the Watch Faces blog post for full details on the new features in Watch Face Format and changes to watch faces development options.

Tooling and library updates

Jetpack Compose for Wear OS

Adoption of Compose on Wear OS has grown 200% in the past year, highlighting the ease with which Compose allows developers to build for the watch form factor. Recently we’ve seen top apps such as WhatsApp, Gmail and Google Calendar built entirely using Compose for Wear OS, and it’s the recommended way for building user interfaces for Wear OS apps.

With the 1.3 release of Jetpack Compose for Wear OS, we’ve graduated a number of visual improvements and fixes from beta to stable.

In the past year, we’ve added features such as SwipeToReveal, to give users additional means for completing actions, an expandable item, to enhance the use of the smaller screen and show additional information where needed, and a range of WearPreview supporting annotations, for ensuring your app works optimally across the range of device sizes and font scales.

Compose for Wear OS previews usage in Android Studio
Compose for Wear OS previews usage in Android Studio

And at Google I/O 2024, we announced a lot of new updates with Jetpack Compose that help you build across form factors, including Wear OS, read more in this blog and check out how SoundCloud supported more screens using 45% less code with Jetpack Compose.

Tiles and ProtoLayout

Wear OS tiles give users fast, predictable access to the information and actions they rely on most. Version 1.4 of the Jetpack Tiles library, currently in alpha, introduces preview support for Android Studio to help you quickly iterate on your Tile development while also helping you create optimal-looking tiles on a range of display sizes.

Previews can be seen starting in Android Studio Koala Feature Drop (Canary), with the following dependencies:

    • androidx.wear.tiles:tiles-tooling-preview:1.4.0-alpha02+
    • androidx.wear.tiles:tiles-tooling:1.4.0-alpha02+
    • androidx.wear:wear-tooling-preview:1.0.0+
@Preview(device = WearDevices.SMALL_ROUND)
fun smallPreview(context: Context) = TilePreviewData(
    onTileRequest = { request ->
        TilePreviewHelper.singleTimelineEntryTileBuilder(
            buildMyTileLayout()
        ).build()
    }
)
Tiles previews usage in Android Studio
Tiles previews usage in Android Studio

We’ve also introduced better means for your app to determine whether your tiles are in use, through the getActiveTilesAsync() method.

Within ProtoLayout’s stable version 1.1, as used by Tiles, we’ve introduced a number of changes, such as the following:

    • Gradient support in ArcLine.
    • Date-time formatting supports different time zones for dynamic data types.
    • Better text autosizing and ellipsizing options, and consistent font padding behavior.
    • Expandable spacers
    • Improved accessibility for Clickable elements

And from 1.2.0-alpha02, we’ve made it easier for your layouts to adjust appropriately for different display sizes by adding the setResponsiveContentInsetEnabled() method to PrimaryLayout, as well as updating it for EdgeContentLayout. To use this setter, update your code as follows:

PrimaryLayout.Builder(deviceParameters)
    .setResponsiveContentInsetEnabled(true)
    .setContent(
        // ...
    )
.build()

Easier testing for fitness apps

Android Studio Koala Feature Drop (Canary) brings a new sensor panel to make it easier to test use of Health Services in your Wear OS app. The panel allows you to configure capabilities of the device, set values of specific data types and stimulate events such as auto-pause and resume of exercises.

Sensor panel usage with Wear OS emulator in Android Studio
Sensor panel usage with Wear OS emulator in Android Studio

Check out this blog to learn more about tooling updates.

Larger Displays

With the momentum surrounding Wear OS, we’re seeing a wider variety of round screen sizes and resolutions, which provides more choices for the user.

We are releasing new guidelines on how to build responsive UIs for different watch display sizes, as well as updates to existing libraries to introduce adaptive layouts, and components.

Check out the ComposeStarter sample for Wear OS on Github to see how to take advantage of these updates in your app. Furthermore, we’ve updated the sample to provide examples of using tools to evaluate your layouts, including :

    • Previews - demonstrating use of WearPreviewDevices to visualize your layouts on a full range of device sizes and font scaling settings.
    • Screenshot testing - helping you detect issues and regressions in your layouts on different sized devices, with different font scales and locales, representative of real-world devices.

Start building for Wear OS now

There has never been a better time to start building for Wear OS! Be sure to check out Building for the future of Wear OS technical session to learn more about all the latest updates for Wear OS!

To get started:

We’re looking forward to seeing the experiences that you build on Wear OS!

Latest updates for watch faces on Wear OS

Posted by Anna Bernbaum – Product Manager, and Garan Jenkin – Developer Relations Engineer

At last year’s Google I/O, we launched the Watch Face Format for Wear OS. This year, as part of our continued partnership with Samsung, we are excited to share some new features that you can use to create exciting new watch face designs! These features are now supported in XML definitions, and later in the year, you’ll also see an update to Watch Face Studio to take advantage of them.

The Watch Face Format is the recommended way to create watch faces for Wear OS. The format makes it easier to create customizable and more power-efficient watch faces for devices that run Wear OS 4 or higher. The Watch Face Format is a declarative XML format, so there is no executable code involved in creating a watch face, and there is no code embedded in your watch face APK.

Additionally, in our move toward the Watch Face Format for watch face creation, we have also made some changes to watch face development.

New features in the Watch Face Format

Flavors

Flavors represent preset configurations for your watch face, available in the companion app:

Watch gallery

They allow the watch face developer to configure useful and attractive combinations of the watch face’s configuration options, and allow the user to visualize and select from these with ease.

We’ve now brought flavors to the Watch Face Format. For a full guide on adding them to your watch face, see the flavors reference.

Complications

We’re adding support for both “goal progress” and “weighted elements” complication types to the Watch Face Format:

circle chart with data saying 60% of goal progress and weight elements circle chart

    • Goal progress is perfect for data where the user has a target, but that target can be exceeded. A good example is step count.
    • Weighted elements can represent discrete subsets of data, showing their relative sizes, where you might otherwise use something like a pie chart.

Both of these complication types can be accessed through the [COMPLICATION.*] expression object. For full details, see the complication guidance.

Weather

Knowing at-a-glance what the weather will be like for the next hour, day, and beyond can make all the difference to a user’s plans! Unsurprisingly, having weather data as a data source in the Watch Face Format has been a common request, and we’re delighted to be able to introduce it in this latest version. You’ll now be able make watch faces like this:

circle chart with data saying 60% of goal progress and weight elements circle chart

Weather Basics

Weather in the Watch Face Format is accessed via the [WEATHER.*] expression object. You can use it in Condition and text Template statements and anywhere where expressions are supported.

For example, to show the current weather condition, use this template and expression:

<Template>Current weather conditions: %s
    <Parameter expression="[WEATHER.CONDITION_NAME]"/>
</Template>

The weather provider in the Watch Face Format supports a range of different metric types for the current day, including the following:

    • Current conditions
    • Temperature - current, minimum (low), and maximum (high)
    • UV index
    • Chance of rain

For the full range of data types and conditions, see the weather guide.

Forecasts

In addition to the current weather, you can access forecast data, both by hour and by day. For example, to access the forecast maximum temperature for tomorrow, use a template and set of expressions similar to the following:

<Template>Tomorrow max temp: %d°%s
    <Parameter expression="[WEATHER.DAYS.1.TEMPERATURE_HIGH]" />
    <Parameter expression="[WEATHER.TEMPERATURE_UNIT] == 1 ? &quot;C&quot; : &quot;F&quot;" />
</Template>

When using weather in the Watch Face Format, there are some further details to be aware of, such as checking for forecast availability or loading errors. For all of this and more, take a look at the weather guide.

Changes to Watch Face development

As we gather momentum behind the Watch Face Format, we’re announcing some changes to existing watch face development options.

We announced recently that only some complications will be available on Wear OS 5, for watch faces built with AndroidX or the Wearable Support Library. This restriction does not apply to watch faces that use the Watch Face Format.

Additionally, starting in early 2025 (specific date to be announced in Q4 2024), all new watch faces published on Google Play must use the Watch Face Format. Existing watch faces that use other libraries, such as AndroidX or the Wearable Support Library, can continue to receive updates without transitioning to the new format.

New resources

To make it easier to create watch faces using the Watch Face Format, we’ve published some more resources on GitHub.

You now have full access to the XSD specification, to help you build your own watch face generating tools.

We’ve also provided validators to check your XML for correctness and memory usage. These are the same checks run by Google Play, so it allows you to run these checks even before you submit your watch face for publishing.

Learn more

Get started with the latest version of the Watch Face Format.

Be sure to check out Building for the future of Wear OS technical session and What’s new in Wear OS at I/O 2024 blog post to learn more about all the latest updates for Wear OS!

Code snippets license:

Copyright 2023 Google LLC.
SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0