The latest smartwatches from Samsung and Google lack support for older watch faces that worked on older Wear OS smartwatches. Here’s why.
Since the release of the Galaxy Watch 4, Samsung has moved away from its own Tizen platform and on to Google’s Wear OS. That brought a huge expansion of watch faces available to be downloaded via the Play Store. The same applies to the Pixel Watch series, which benefits from that same library of watch faces.
However, with the launch of Wear OS 5, Google has made changes to how watch faces work.
The new update solely supports the new “Watch Face Format,” an updated format that strips faces of executable code in an effort to conserve battery life. Samsung co-developed the format with Google. It’s a good thing in the long run, but it does mean that a lot of older Wear OS watch faces are no longer compatible with Wear OS 5 and, in turn, newer smartwatches.
Samsung confirmed that watch faces that no longer meet Google’s updated policy (i.e. using the Watch Face Format) are no longer compatible with the Galaxy Watch 7 and Galaxy Watch Ultra. That also applies to the Pixel Watch 3 from Google.
One of the most notable examples of this is Facer, a popular app that has a large marketplace of watch faces designed for Wear OS smartwatches. While there is an effort to bring the app to Wear OS 5, it’s currently not compatible. Some faces have been ported to the Play Store, but if you’ve been using Facer, you might find that old favorites don’t work on newer watches.
What about Wear OS watches that have been updated to Wear OS 5? Thankfully, this isn’t the case. Older smartwatches will retain compatibility with existing faces, as has been tested now that updates are rolling out. So if you’re on a Pixel Watch 2 or Galaxy Watch 6 and older, you shouldn’t run into any issues.
More on Wear OS:
- Samsung has updated these Galaxy Watch models to Wear OS 5
- Galaxy Watch 4 starts getting Wear OS 5 update – how many more will it get?
- Samsung brings watch faces from Wear OS 5 to Galaxy Watch 4, 5, and 6
Update: This article has been rewritten as a general guide to watch faces on Wear OS 5, as it was originally discussing broken faces after updating to Wear OS 5, which was incorrect.
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