Samsung is rolling out the first big Galaxy Watch update in months, but it comes with an upgrade to Wear OS 5 which, for some watch faces, spells trouble. If you watch face stopped working on Galaxy Watch following the latest update, 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.
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. In turn, the new One UI 6 Watch update that’s rolling out to Galaxy Watch 4, Watch 5, and Watch 6 might end up disabling some watch faces on your smartwatch since the update is based on Wear OS 5.
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, the latest Galaxy Watch update will break compatibility.
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