Will Apple ever allow developers to create watch faces?

[weezin]

I bought a Series 3 in 2020 and left it at the stock watch face (Activity Digital) and never changed it. I recently upgraded to a Series 8 and have been playing with watch faces quite a bit, but I'm finding that I'm not totally happy with any of them, or at least, I'd love some more options.

I bias much more toward wanting a "digital" watch face rather than an analog one, and I find that the options for this are a little limited both in terms of the watch faces offered and in terms of the customization for the complications.

For example, I'd love to have a Modular face that has more emphasis on the activity rings, instead of just forcing them to be a small complication. I realize that I can set "activity" as the middle complication, but I don't care about seeing a graph - I just want to see the current numbers, and in that complication they are way too small.

Another example - I actually love the "Activity Digital" face, but would love a) another complication or two and b) to be able to change the color scheme away from multi-color.

Anyway, I'm wondering if the face gallery would ever be opened up more broadly so that developers could create new ones. I know there are apps out there that allow you to temporarily put different watch faces on the screen, but these are not native. It seems like with some guidance and guidelines, this could be a great profit center for apple, with the added benefit of allowing much more watch faces in the gallery.

 

[jz0309]

The answer is no, Apple will want to continue to control the overall “look and feel”…

 

[bruinsrme]

I can’t help but think no. Just thinking out loud, apple maybe reluctant especially if it access any type of medical info or biometric

 

[haruhiko]

I don’t think so.
Apple is still using exclusive watch faces to sell different Apple Watch models.

 

[CyberDavis]

I guess ultimately it will depend on the architecture behind them.
As they need to embed with the Apple Watch app it would need the watch face files to be a format that can be applied outside of a firmware/software update.
Never say never, but i suspect it is unlikely in at least the short term.

 

[weezin]

If they haven't done it after this many years, I agree, they probably won't. But on the same token, after this many years I'd have hoped we'd have access to many more watch faces. But I think @haruhiko is right, they do it just to sell more watches. Disappointing.

 

[unixfool]

Seeing as competitor smartwatch manufacturers have watch face markets, this is disappointing to hear.

I'm new to the Apple Watch platform. The first thing I noticed after purchasing was the small amount of available watch faces. I'm coming from Fitbit (was using the Sense). Prior to that, I was using a Samsung Watch. Both of those companies have robust watch face markets. Is this an important aspect of smartwatch ownership? Well, I wouldn't give it so much weight that lack of a watch face market would stop me from purchasing one, but it's definitely a "would be nice" type of thing, IMO. I don't even think it has anything to do with health data, because the watch face UI itself wouldn't contain the health data - that is pulled from elsewhere.

It's disappointing, but as several folks have already mentioned, they've not done it thus far and they've been selling watches for a while now - it's unlikely it'll happen. It doesn't hurt to hope, though.

 

[weezin]

I agree, it's disappointing. As I mentioned, I've had a Series 3 since 2020 and recently upgraded to a Series 8. For whatever reason, I didn't really care about faces with the 3, but now with the bigger screen, better performance, I started caring and was disappointed when I found out that the selection was so limited. Oh well.

I have to say that after seeing some of the new Pixel Watch faces, I'm left a bit jealous. They did a really great job on some of those to present things in a way that Apple hasn't done before. I want some of them (but that will obviously not happen).