Facer Is Returning To Wear OS, But Not Until The Next Big Update

The well-known watch face app Facer was forced to depart from Wear OS last year, but it’s coming back soon with some big changes.

In a post this week, Facer has announced that changes in Wear OS 6 will allow the watch face app to return to the platform, “better than ever.”

Facer, the leading platform for smartwatch customization, is thrilled to announce a major update coming later this year, aligned with the rollout of Wear OS 6. With new system-level capabilities coming in Wear OS 6, alongside innovations from Facer — the full Facer experience is set to be reintroduced — revitalized, more powerful, and better than ever.

Facer was previously forced to effectively drop Wear OS support, as the Wear OS 5 update introduced changes that left the app completely incompatible. Those changes aren’t being revoked in Wear OS 6, but Google is making updates that leave room for Facer to come back.

In particular, Facer cites “Google’s new Watch Face Format” as well as support for “Watch Face Push.” The latter feature allows users to sync a watch face from the Facer app on their smartphone instead of downloading all of their watch faces individually from the Play Store on their watch. In its own post, Google explains how “Watch Face Push” works from a developer perspective:

Watch faces managed and deployed using Watch Face Push are all written using Watch Face Format. Developers publish these watch faces in the same way as publishing through Google Play, though there are some additional checks the developer must make which are described in the Watch Face Push guidance.
The Watch Face Push API covers only the watch part of this typical marketplace system diagram – as the app developer, you have control and responsibility for the phone app and cloud components, as well as for building the Wear OS app using Watch Face Push.

Pujie and Timeflik will also be leveraging these changes to offer marketplaces on Wear OS 6.