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Robert Nazarian
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You can do some pretty cool things with an Android Wear smartwatch, such as check-in quickly at that local restaurant, open a tip calculator, or even pay for your Starbucks coffee. Those are the “smart” things you can do, but probably the most popular thing to do is swap out watch faces. Android Wear has only been around for a few months, and already there are hundreds, if not thousands of very cool watch faces for you to try. There are certainly a bunch of them as standalone apps in the Play Store, but I wanted to show you a few apps that offer you so much more. For starters, they give you ability to design your own watch faces and even share them. That may or may not be your thing, but these apps also offer you a first class ticket to a world of more downloadable watch faces than you can possibly imagine.
Facer for Android Wear is probably the most popular app of the three with its huge following on Reddit. With Facer, you can create some pretty sophisticated watch faces with the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. Your faces can involve weather data, time & date, custom text, custom images, battery percentage & temperature, custom shapes, and image alignments. I think you will be completely surprised at how creative Facer lets you be on just your phone. If you’re more of a pro, you will still want to create your own graphics with something like PhotoShop, but they can all be imported into Facer, whether it’s the dial and/or the hands. If you think you have created something cool, you can export it to a .face or .zip file and share it in the app’s SubReddit section.
As I mentioned before, you might not be the creative type or you might not even have the time to make your own creations. Since Facer offers the ability to export creations, there are tons of watch faces available for you to download and install. You can find a ton of them on the SubReddit or you can head over to the facerepo to get a more organized approach. Facer supports both round and square watches. You simply download the .face or .zip file and save it on your phone. Then you can import them into the Facer app and send the faces to your watch. The app also keeps track of all your imported (or created) watch faces so you can quickly update your watch without any fuss.
Do you have an idea for a face that would look cool? You can request it in the SubReddit and there’s a good chance someone will do it. A lot of people take pictures of their past “dumb watches” with the hope that someone will duplicate it, and believe me, your chances are pretty good.
Facer does have it’s limitations though and the fact that these faces are manual downloads is one of them. Since they aren’t coming from the Play Store, you won’t get notified if the creator updated the face to fix a bug or issue. You will have to track that down yourself, so you probably want to bookmark the thread that the face was posted in.
Facer for Android Wear is only $1.00, which is dirt cheap when you consider how many watch faces it gives you access to, not to mention the included WYSIWYG editor. Even if you never design your own face, Facer is worth every penny and then some.
You will find a ton of watch faces and tutorials on Reddit. And don’t forget facerepo.com
Face for Wear is the newest app (just exited beta) on the scene and it’s destined for greatness. It’s very similar to Facer in that you can customize your own watch faces, share them, and download other user-created faces (Face Packs), but Face for Wear takes things to another level.
Starting with customization capabilities, it does offer the ability to create faces within the app, but the real deal is using their template that makes it easy to create faces on your desktop through Android Studio. It’s one thing to create a watch face, but it’s another to make an APK out of it and offer it on Google Play. Face for Wear makes it so easy. All you really need to do it install Android Studio on your desktop and download and import the template from Github. Well there is a little more, but they put together a tutorial that walks you through everything. They even offer a PhotoShop template. These finished APKs are referred to as Face Packs and can be uploaded to the Google Play Store as either Free or paid apps. This means you can leverage your creativity if you wish. All Face Packs will need the Face for Wear app on the phone in order to utilize them.
Just like Facer, you don’t have to be on the creative side to get a lot of benefit from Face for Wear. There will be tons of Face Packs available soon. I say “soon” because the app literally just exited beta, but it has the potential to be more popular than Facer for a few of reasons. Since individual watch faces (Face Packs) will be available in the Play Store, users will be notified if a Face Pack has been updated just like any other Android app. You will also be able to find other Face Packs easily by searching for “face pack” in the Play Store. Last but not least, the really good designers are likely to utilize Face for Wear since it gives them the opportunity to make a few bucks, whereas apps like Facer don’t offer that. I am not trying to say that Facer doesn’t, and won’t still offer fantastic looking watch faces, it’s just that I believe that Face for Wear has more of a chance of attracting those that can create those extra special watch faces, if you know what I mean.
Now I mentioned that you can find other Face Packs to download by searching in the Play Store, but the plan is to also display most of them within the “Explore” feature of the app. So you can easily browse faces and download the ones you wish.
Again, Face for Wear is in its infancy and will continue to grow. If you download it today, don’t expect to find nearly as many faces to download as Facer for Android Wear, but give it a month or two, and this app will be cooking.
Face for Wear costs $1,99, and again, it’s dirt cheap when you consider what it offers. Watch Faces are compatible with both square and round faces so download it now.
You can read the tutorial for creating Face Packs here and download the template from Github here. Android Studio is available here.
A SubReddit has also been started.
Android Wear Faces Creator is the simplest app of the three, but that’s a good thing in that the most casual user can create something meaningful for themselves. With Wear Faces, you can easily make a face out of any picture you have. You can select the image and add a digital clock or date information. You can also make it an analog clock by adding images for the minute, hour, and second hands. Wear Faces even lets you select different images for the “Always On” or “Ambient Screen.” Of course, you can get a little more creative by designing a watch face with something like PhotoShop. Just make separate files for your dial, hour hand, minute hand, and seconds hand.
Just like the other apps, if you created something that you think people will like, you can export it as a watch face pack. And if you’re looking for something unique, you can always visit their website for other featured watch face packs that you can download as ZIP files. You will find faces for both square and circular watches, and they can easily be imported into the app. You don’t even have to clutter your phone with these Zip files since the app is compatible with Dropbox and Drive. This make it a lot easier to organize all your faces.
The only issue I have with Wear Faces is that it doesn’t have a screen showing you all your faces. You will need to re-import each face if you want to use it again. It’s not a lot of work, but it would be easier if all your imported faces could easily be seen from within a section of the app.
Here’s a video from the developer showing you how to download and import a watch face pack….
Click here to view the embedded video.
Wear Faces is absolutely free so there is no reason not to give this one a try. As I said, it’s a simpler approach, but you will find some really cool faces, and it’s not as daunting as the other apps when it comes to designing your own works of art. You can quickly take an image from your vacation and turn it into a watch face in no time.
You can find more info at Wearfaces.com and Featured Watch Faces to download here.
The developer has also created a square watch template here and a round watch template here
I love Android Wear and all the things that it can do, but I probably have the most fun changing out watch faces. If you’re like me, then you will want to download all three of these apps to either bring out your creative side or for finding that perfect watch face (or both).
Are you using either of these apps now? Let us know your thoughts. Is there another app you like to use for creating and sharing watch faces that I haven’t mentioned? Let me know that too.
Come comment on this article: Best Android Wear apps for creating, sharing, and finding the coolest watch faces
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