Android Builders Weblog: Migrating to the Watch Face Format

Posted by Garan Jenkin – Developer Relations Engineer

This publish is a part of Put on OS Highlight Week. At the moment, we’re exploring how Amoledwatchfaces efficiently migrated to Watch Face Format, bettering customization, extending battery life, and rising improvement pace.

Amoledwatchfaces is a number one creator of watch faces for Put on OS utilizing the Watch Face Format (WFF), recognized for a particular information-rich and crisp type. Now well-established on the platform with over 190 watch faces, we talked to Tomáš Marcinčin, proprietor of Amoledwatchfaces about their profitable migration utilizing the format, and the advantages he’s seen in improvement velocity and efficiency consequently.

Creating high-quality watch faces with out complicated code

In earlier years, creating watch faces “took plenty of time,” says Tomáš Marcinčin, proprietor of Amoledwatchfaces. The AndroidX libraries allowed builders to create watch faces, however Tomáš, like others, was left searching for an “simpler solution to create watch faces,” and crucially one which shifted the main target from coding and onto design.

“My primary motivation was to convey customers watch faces which are of the identical high quality as these which are pre-installed. Customers have been searching for designs that weren’t too difficult, but customizable and regarded as if they’d been designed for that watch.”

Expressing curiosity in a personalized expertise

Like many creators, Tomáš began utilizing Watch Face Studio, Samsung’s watch face creation device, giving designers and builders a straightforward solution to construct watch faces for Put on OS rapidly.

Whereas profitable, as a developer, he discovered himself wanting extra management, and an answer that was someplace in between Watch Face Studio and full code – this led him to working immediately with the format.

Migrating to Watch Face Format

Amoledwatchfaces already had a major again catalog of watch faces, and took on the twin process of each changing all his current watch faces and producing new ones immediately within the format. “I needed to have each previous and new watch face design in WFF.” This could be certain that all Amoledwatchfaces’ watch faces could be accessible to present and future customers.

Tomáš began working immediately in Android Studio, regularly refining his construct course of. Android Studio has just lately added assist for syntax validation – a function Tomáš fed immediately into and helped check as an early adopter.

As soon as up and working, Tomáš discovered that among the most time-consuming duties of AndroidX have been very simple within the format. Notably, including the extent of person customization he – and customers – needed “may be very simple.”

For instance, a few of Amoledwatchfaces’ customers needed totally different All the time-On Show (AOD) kinds – some most well-liked a dimmed view of the lively state, whereas others needed solely the digital clock. Utilizing Variant, and configuration choices equivalent to ListConfiguration and BooleanConfiguration, it was simple for Tomáš to offer customers the flexibility to customise their watch face – one thing which might have required a major funding utilizing legacy libraries.

<Variant mode="AMBIENT" goal="alpha" worth="[CONFIGURATION.aod] == 0
    ? 255 : [CONFIGURATION.aod] == 1 ? 165 : 0" />

Overcoming Watch Faces high quality and versioning challenges

To shorten the debug cycle and reduce errors, Tomáš makes use of the WFF validator and reminiscence footprint instruments in his Gradle scripts. He additionally incorporates instruments equivalent to PNGQuant into his Gradle builds in order that useful resource utilization stays optimized.

Nonetheless, the largest problem is creating totally different variations of the watch face for the totally different format variations that gadgets assist. To assist resolve this subject, Tomáš took benefit of product flavors, which let him outline a unique construct configuration for every model. This fashion, he was in a position to assist the widest vary of customers whereas nonetheless utilizing the newest and biggest format options on the latest gadgets:

/** Arrange flavors for various format variations **/


flavorDimensions += "wff_version"
productFlavors{
   // Put on OS 4
   create("wff1"){
       dimension = "wff_version"
       manifestPlaceholders["wff_version"] = "1"
       versionNameSuffix = "-wff1"
       versionCode = 10000 + (android.defaultConfig.versionCode ?: 0)
       minSdk = 33
       targetSdk = 33
   }


   // … different flavors outlined right here!


   // Put on OS 6
   create("wff4"){
       dimension = "wff_version"
       manifestPlaceholders["wff_version"] = "4"
       versionCode = 40000 + (android.defaultConfig.versionCode ?: 0)
       versionNameSuffix = "-wff4"
       minSdk = 36
       targetSdk = 36
   }
}

Bettering velocity and battery life

Amoledwatchfaces is now seeing their funding on this journey to future-proof their watch faces paying off: “Our watch faces are actually merely extra customizable and extra battery pleasant. With 8 customized complication slots the place you’ll be able to mix all totally different complication sorts, customers can have each doable mixture of related information at a look.”

Person suggestions has been nice, in accordance with Tomáš, “folks largely seek advice from battery life enhancements after the change to Watch Face Format.”

And the format has additionally had a optimistic impact on improvement velocity: “I’m creating watch faces sooner and cleaner. Updating tasks to newer WFF variations may be very simple. Fixing bugs is simple too.”