If you have a Wear OS 3-powered smartwatch such as the Google Pixel Watch, you might want to avoid using older watch faces. They don’t appear to be fully compatible with the latest version of Google’s wearable platform. Several users have found that always-on display (AOD) does not work properly with those watch faces. AOD automatically turns off after some time.
Users have been reporting this AOD issue for some time now. 9to5Google recently verified it on a Pixel Watch and Fossil Gen 6 Wellness, both of which arrived running Wear OS 3 out of the box. The publication tested the wearables using a couple of older watch faces from ustwo Studios. According to the new report, AOD works as expected for about 15 seconds. But after that, it turns off automatically. The display no longer stays on. You must tap on the screen or use the raise-to-wake gesture (if enabled) to check the time and notifications, which defeats the whole purpose of enabling AOD.
AOD doesn’t work properly when using older watch faces on Wear OS 3
People primarily use AOD if their hands are often occupied at work or have disabled the raise-to-wake gesture. It allows you to quickly check the time and notifications on your smartwatch. You can look at the screen from any angle without needing to tap on it. Unfortunately, compatibility issues with older watch faces mean AOD does not work properly on Wear OS 3 smartwatches. The problem appears to stem from developers not applying the latest Watch Face library for Wear OS. A developer told the publication that watch faces that do not use the Jetpack library have this problem.
Jetpack is the latest Wear OS Watch Face library. It has been available in the stable channel since December last year, succeeding the older Wearable Support Library. Pixel Watch’s stock watch faces use Jetpack. But some third-party developers have yet to adopt the new library on their watch faces. And Wear OS 3 users are having to find that out the hard way. AOD is suddenly not working for them because they loved their old watch faces and used them on their new smartwatches as well.
Google should be able to fix this problem
This AOD problem on Wear OS 3 devices should be gone if developers update their older watch faces with support for the Jetpack library. But Google should be able to fix the issue from its side as well. That’s because Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 doesn’t have the issue even though it runs Wear OS 3. The Korean firm likely patched this shortcoming on older watch faces on its One UI Watch custom software. Hopefully, Google is working on a fix too. It has been collecting bug reports on the issue for some time now. The company briefly closed the bug report but reopened it earlier this week. A fix should roll out soon.
2022-11-08 15:06:35