The beauty of a smartwatch is that you can choose a watch face that suits your mood – but Google didn’t see that as being important when it built Android Wear (although an update will soon rectify that oversight)
However, a new app called Face For Wear has hit Google Play that fixes the problem for them.
Essential reading: Best apps for Android Wear
Face For Wear is a smartphone app enables you to create your own watch faces for your smartwatch – or download other peoples' efforts.
The app enables you to manage watch faces on your Android Wear device, much like Google’s own app. You choose the design you want and “push” the watch face to your Google based wearable.
Update: Android Wear update adds official custom watch faces
The Google Play description points out that the app is still “largely a work in progress” so don’t expect a seamless experience.
The lack of customisation has been a major bugbear with the smartwatch OS, and Google is rushing to build APIs to enable users to load their own custom watch faces.
Guide: Installing apps on your Android Wear smartwatch
It even went so far as to ask developers to stop turning out their own custom watch faces until Android Wear was “migrated to the Android L release later this year.”
The beauty of Android has always been its customisability, and a long time before Google had nailed its smartphone OS, the likes of HTC were leading the way with their own skews. And that’s exactly what’s happening here.
With around 20 apps now – including the ever-popular Facer – promising fresh watch faces for Android Wear devices, it seems the revolution has started.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.