Posted by Garan Jenkin – Developer Relations Engineer

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

Amoledwatchfaces is a number one creator of watch faces for Put on OS utilizing the Watch Face Format (WFF), identified 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 in consequence.

Creating high-quality watch faces with out advanced code

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

“My predominant motivation was to convey customers watch faces which are of the identical high quality as these which are pre-installed. Customers have been on the lookout for designs that weren’t too sophisticated, 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 software, giving designers and builders a straightforward strategy to construct watch faces for Put on OS shortly.

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 straight 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 straight within the format. “I wished to have each previous and new watch face design in WFF.” This might be sure that all Amoledwatchfaces’ watch faces can be obtainable to present and future customers.

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

As soon as up and working, Tomáš discovered that a few of the most time-consuming duties of AndroidX have been very simple within the format. Notably, including the extent of consumer customization he – and customers – wished “could be very straightforward.”

For example, a few of Amoledwatchfaces’ customers wished completely different At all times-On Show (AOD) types – some most popular a dimmed view of the lively state, whereas others wished solely the digital clock. Utilizing Variant, and configuration choices corresponding to ListConfiguration and BooleanConfiguration, it was simple for Tomáš to provide customers the power 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 corresponding to PNGQuant into his Gradle builds in order that useful resource utilization stays optimized.

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

/** 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
   }
}

Enhancing velocity and battery life

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

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

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