One of the world’s biggest repositories for third-party Android watch faces has confirmed that it’s working on improving support for Wear OS 5, after a change to the software that means the newest models on the market can’t access most of its features.
Facer, which has over 10 million downloads on the Google Play store, is a watch-face customization platform with over 500,000 downloadable watch faces in its catalog.
Unfortunately, a recent change by Google means that the best Android smartwatches on the market, namely the Pixel Watch 3, Samsung Galaxy Watch 7, and the Galaxy Watch Ultra, aren’t compatible with Facer’s watch faces.
It’s all because of Google’s new Watch Face Format (WFF) tool, Facer explained in a blog post. Facer says the new format has more limited capabilities than Facer’s, and as such converting faces to the format “will result in loss of functionality in a number of cases.” There are more issues besides, but Facer says it’s working hard with Google to get things back on track.
Facer committed to Wear OS 5 support
Aside from the loss of functionality, Facer also says that WFF faces can only be published in the Google Play Store, “a manual process which is not logistically feasible for our catalog of 500,000 faces.” Faces bought within Facer wouldn’t be picked up by the Google Play store either, so users would be forced to repurchase their watch faces. Finally, the current format doesn’t support subscription models, affecting Facer Premium subscribers.
“We understand these issues are detrimental to Facer users and we have been actively discussing a resolution with Google since the Watch Face Format was announced last year,” the company lamented. “The change was unfortunately rolled out before a solution could be reached.”
For now, Facer says that Wear OS 4 users and many Wear OS 5 users on older devices can continue to use its service uninhibited. However, it warns that anyone upgrading to the Pixel Watch 3, Galaxy Watch 7, or Galaxy Watch Ultra will no longer be able to use Facer.
The company says it is “working hard with Google to bring the Facer service” to users of those watches, and will endeavor to add some of its best watch faces to the Google Play store meantime.
The company also quietly hinted that users might want to get in touch with Google to express their own displeasure at the current situation.
So if you’re an avid Facer user who relies on its watch faces for your wearable customization, you might want to think twice about pulling the trigger on that new Android smartwatch you’ve been eyeing up.
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stephen.warwick@futurenet.com (Stephen Warwick)
