Watch Face Format | Android Developers
A watch face is the first thing that a user sees when they take a look at their watch, making it the most frequently-used surface of Wear OS. Users rely on watch faces to customize their watch to suit their style and meet their needs.
Created in partnership with Samsung, the Watch Face Format is a declarative XML format to configure the appearance and behavior of watch faces. This means that there's no executable code involved in creating a watch face, and there's no code embedded in your watch face APK.
The Wear OS platform takes care of the logic needed to render the watch face so you can focus on your creative ideas, rather than code optimizations or battery performance.
Watch faces that are built with this new format require less maintenance and fewer updates than the ones built using the Jetpack Watch Face libraries. For example, you don't need to update your watch face to benefit from improvements in performance or battery consumption, or to get the latest bug fixes.
Note: As of July 10, 2024, watch faces must use the Watch Face Format in order to be installed on new watches that launch with Wear OS 5 pre-installed. Learn more about the user-facing changes in this Help Center article.
