By now, you’ve probably heard the Android Wear motto, Wear what you want. While it’s natural to have an aversion to marketing speak, this is one of those slogans with a grain of truth. Given how many Android Wear apps let you customize every facet of the watch face. Suppose you’ve ever fancied yourself designing watch faces for Rolex or like how a smartwatch gives you this element of control. In that case, it’s time to get to designing. Android Wear still has some ways to go when it comes to helping you keep your phone in your pocket more often. Still, it definitely wins when it comes to customization if you grab the right watch face.
Pujie Watch Faces
If there’s one place to start your customization journey, it’s with Pujie. You can control nearly every essential interface piece: the clock hands, fonts, animations, app launchers, and what interactive elements to display. The other neat feature is how you can import and share your own creations. The slide-out menu has the option to import a preset code. These can be found in the dedicated to all things Pujie. There’s really no limit to how much you can do with this clever watch face; it’s one that I use most often.
Pujie ($4)
Watchmaker Premium
WatchMaker Premium is another good choice if you want to dig into the minutiae of the bezel and other details of the watch face. You can craft something complex with the dials and hands customized to your liking or go with a stark interface that features the time a single-color background. WatchMaker Premium throws some samples, or you can start entirely from scratch.
Driver Watch Face
For some reason, with Android Wear watch faces, I’m always drawn to the ones that use a light tail to follow around the second hand. So when I spotted Driver and found I could change up the color, I was sold. You can do a lot, such as tweak two critical sections on the inside that feature the weather, battery, unread messages, and a second counter. It’s an excellent cross between a traditional watch face and an LED sports model that also tosses numerous customization features.
Driver Watch Face ($0.99)
Minimal Elegant
While the name of this app may be a mouthful, it definitely delivers when it comes to providing a good amount of customization over several different areas. There are some well-thought-out features. Like enabling the watch faces to match the size of your specific model and several check boxes that make it visual as to which features you’ve turned on or off. The app does go overkill a bit when it comes to notifications. Every time you fire up a new section or try to customize a feature, there’s a description to tell you exactly what it does. There should be an option to disable all such pop-up boxes, as they get annoying fast.
Minimal Elegant ($1.59)
Skymaster
This watch face pairs up nicely with a set of aviator glasses and a leather jacket. But despite the allusions to the glamorous life of a pilot, you’ll find many different ways to make it your own. The most prominent way is to ditch the watch face logo, and write your text in the middle of the watch face, an excellent way to impress friends and family at your next get-together. Other helpful customizations are baked in, such as choosing which apps you launch from the inside dials. Selecting weather updates and choosing colors to match your mood or outfit better.
Skymaster ($0.99)
Hybrid Interactive
If you really want to get down into the details, to make a bunch of choices, about how your watch face looks. Then Hybrid Interactive will be a good choice. In fact, there are nine different interactive touch points. So you can go directly into Maps, Calendar, check the weather, or other specific actions. There are also a lot of wheel cogs. And other moving parts that work as lovely allusions to the world of analog watches. The color scheme is sprinkled throughout the watch, in the hands, and other places, which gives it just the right amount of differentiation.
Hybrid Interactive ($1.29)
Odyssey
Odyssey doesn’t have as many choices regarding the specific color or aesthetic configuration. Still, it grants you much control over ambient light brightness, and how long the watch will stay in interactive mode versus standby. As with other options, the most powerful feature is the ability to customize the app, you open from the watch face. It’s much faster to launch weather or a calendar, from the main watch face instead of scrolling through the long list of apps from the launcher. Some of the interfaces in the phone app could use some work, though the available tools are excellent.
Odyssey ($0.99)
Atlas
Many of the customizable watch faces keep it traditional. Not so with Atlas, which gives you a satellite view of the Earth. With a picture of which parts of the globe are in daylight and nighttime. There are still plenty of controls for a digital or analog watch face. With the ability to change the color scheme. And select what details are displayed in ambient mode. My favorite add-on is seeing information about the International Space Station’s location on the watch face.
Atlas ($1.99)
Dynamic Watch Face
Dynamic is a good choice if you’re hoping to get in there and take control of every granular detail. The hour-minute hand colors, time format, app shortcuts, background textures, and even the weather provider you use. There’s also a compass with instructions on calibrating by moving the watch in complete cycles with the axis pointing upward. You may look a little weird doing it in public. But it’s worth the effort as you’ll have something akin to an outdoors close watch on your wrist.
Dynamic Watch Face ($1.20)
Morphing Watch Face
Morphing brings a lot of customization to a splashy modern-looking interface. Than some of the more traditional looks in this collection. It’s great for putting the time, weather, and app launchers in an easy-to-see spot on your watch face. Most customization comes with color controls, as you can dip into the art of color mixing. And choose what shows up on the front of your watch. There are several other design configurations to choose from, so you can go with a more traditional look. Or one that takes advantage of the touch screen.
Morphing Watch Face ($0.99)
