Can a Android Wear notification page be scrollable? - wear-os

Question

We have an SMS app for Android Wear (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.awear.coffee)
Right now we use regular notification actions and when you select Reply it launches our activity on the watch. I want to replace the Reply action with a notification page with a custom activity that holds a few buttons and a list of strings.
I've tried two approaches.
Create a large notification page that holds the content
This doesn't work because Notification.WearableExtender.setCustomContentHeight has a hidden max value so the content gets clipped. I think it's the same height as if you use setCustomSizePreset(SIZE_LARGE). I've verified that if I use a default notification with a ton of text it can be larger than this, but if you use a custom display intent it gets clipped.
Use a fullscreen notification page and add a scrollview to it
This doesn't work because the input gets blocked somehow. Whenever you scroll the activity receives Action.DOWN, Action.MOVE, Action.CANCEL in that order, so you only get one Action.MOVE no matter how long you drag. I'm guessing this is because the OS wants to control the left/right swipes.
Any ideas on how to get around this? I've tried setting custom onTouch listeners but they still never receive all the touch events.
Any help would be appreciated. It would make our app much better if we could reduce the number of taps and swipes needed.
Jakob

Answer 1

if you are using bridged notification(With out having wear module) You can insert extended text content to your notification by adding one of the "big view" styles(InboxStyle,BigTextStyle) to your notification. On a handheld device, users can see the big view content by expanding the notification. On a wearable device, the big view content is visible by default.
BigTextStyle bigStyle = new NotificationCompat.BigTextStyle();
bigStyle.bigText(someBigText);
NotificationCompat.Builder notificationBuilder =
new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)
.setSmallIcon(R.drawable.ic_small)
.setContentTitle(title)
.setContentText(contentText)
.setContentIntent(viewPendingIntent)
.addAction(R.drawable.ic_map,
getString(R.string.somestring), mapPendingIntent)
.setStyle(bigStyle);

Answer 2

I ran into the same problems.
The limit on setCustomContentHeight is frustrating. I couldn't find a way around it.
Likewise, there doesn't seem to be a good way to circumvent the limitations imposed on tap-listeners with the fullscreen notification.
My solution was to add an Action to the first page of the notification that launches an Activity based on the GridViewPager. Once there, the limitations are gone, but it still mostly looks like a Notification. With the principal differences being, (1) you have to 'tap' the first Notification card, rather than swipe it, and (2) swiping up and down don't automatically go to the next/previous notifications.