I'm not clear about the process of publishing an android Wear application as a separate apk.
My wear app is mobile dependent and supports both wear 1.0 and 2.0. I followed Google instructions of publishing the wear app as an embedded apk inside the mobile apk and everything works fine. But is it possible to publish the wear apk independently (again, as a mobile dependent app) to the wear store ?
Appreciate the help.
Based on the documentation - Identifying an app as standalone:
Wear 2.0 requires a meta-data element in the Android Manifest file of watch apps, as a child of the <application> element. The name of the meta-data element is com.google.android.wearable.standalone and the value must be true or false. The element indicates whether your watch app is a standalone app and thus doesn't require a phone-side Android app to operate. If the setting for the element is true, your app can be made available in the Play Store on watches paired to iPhones, as long as your active APKs in all channels (e.g., in the beta channel) have the element set to true. If not all of your APKs (alpha, beta, and production) that currently are served to users have the above setting, your app will be unavailable when a user searches on a watch paired to an iPhone.
A watch app may or may not be considered standalone. A watch app can be categorized as one of the following:
Completely independent of a phone app
Semi-independent (a phone app is not required and would provide only optional features)
Dependent on a phone app
If a watch app is completely independent or semi-independent, set the value of the new meta-data element to true:
<application>
...
<meta-data
android:name="com.google.android.wearable.standalone"
android:value="true" />
...
</application>
For more information here are some links:
Distribute to Android Wear
Packaging and Distributing Wear Apps
Hope this helps.
Related
I have developed an app for wear os, I tested on my GW5 and all worked pretty well.
I release the app on Playstore. At the time I did the procedure as I always did with regular phone apps. But turns out that it as a bit different. my app is "released", but it shows "Your device isn't compatible with this version", doesn't matter if I try to access it from playstore app or the browser.
So my "questions" are:
How to release a wear os app on playstore?
What should I set on Google Play Console, what data, what fields?
Is there anything extra I should do on my project on android studio, besides the settings that already come with the project when I create one?
I have already read a lot of Google docs, but they are confusing and I don't find any guide or similar online for wear os.
I have published Phone app and wear OS app both together. But I forgot to set Opt-in to Wear OS settings. Now I want to release one more wear OS build with Opt-in to Wear OS settings turned on. Is it okay to release just wearOS apk with updated version number?.
No, you should publish both apps together. It may cause your mobile app to no show up in search if you publish without it.
I just published my app for wear devices, its the Watch Face, don't have any UI for phone app. I uploaded to the Google Play.
But it says This app is incompatible with your device. To all users or Devices.
Anyone have idea?
Since Android Wear application are only in sync with a handheld device, it needs to have a corresponding application in the handheld device.
Let me make it little more clear:
To install anything on Android Wear, you need to have corresponding application for mobile, which will sync up its corresponding wear part and install the same on wear.
So go ahead develop a dummy kind of an application for handheld.
According to the official documentation, in order to publish a wearable app without a phone app component, you need to raise your minimum target SDK version to 2.0.
Source: https://developer.android.com/training/wearables/apps/standalone-apps.html
I installed the Android Wear app on my phone to link with my Moto 360 and Android Wear emulator. For various reasons, I would like to "reset" the Android Wear app so that it forgets about all of its connections.
I uninstalled the Android Wear app and re-downloaded it from the Google Play store, but it still remembers that it was last paired to my emulator.
How can I reset the Android Wear app to fresh-install experience?
Connections to wearable devices are managed by the Google Play Services, so you should clear its data as well (warning: it will remove all other (may be) valuable data which are stored by Google Play Services).
In the device choosing screen Wear app shows all paired Bluetooth devices, so to clear this list - unpair devices in the bluetooth settings).
I got invitation to the Android Wear Developer program but when I try to install the Android Wear Preview app I see information that my device (Samsung Galaxy S2) is not compatible with the app. Is there some kind of list of devices compatible with Android Wear Preview app?
Thank you,
You need a 4.3+ Android smartphone. Because the Notification listener functionality has been added with API level 18.
Tablets were stated to be supported but right now they're filtered out from the store. You can still manually install the APK though.
Bluetooth LE isn't mandatory - for the preview at least.
I don't think there is a device spesific restriction, but according to developer.android.com
Note: The Android Wear Preview app is compatible with Android 4.3 and higher and is not available for the Android emulator.
Edit: I think BLE is used for communication between smartphone and watch. So obviously that would be hardware restriction.