With Wear OS 5, Google and Samsung will further enhance the Watch Face Format (WFF) introduced at Google I/O 2023

New watches pre-installed with Wear OS 5 will only be able to access Google-approved watch faces, 9to5 Google reports In a blog post, Google said that devices like the recently released Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 and Galaxy Watch Ultra will only be able to use watchfaces that "meet our performance and quality standards"

WFF, which was built through a partnership with Samsung, is called a declarative XML format in coding, and the watchface's Android Package Kit (which Google uses to distribute and install apps) contains executable code or code that is It is not embedded This means that developers do not have to worry about battery performance or code optimization because the watchface is rendered on the watch's processor

What this means is that Google states:

According to the report, according to the technology company, WFF is required to access most complications, and by 2025 all new published on the Google Play store watchfaces will need to use the watchface format, according to the report

For those who may not know, a complication is a tool on a smartwatch that integrates with an app For example, they are symbols that show the progress of a goal, such as colored rings surrounding the percentages of an activity goal It could also be an icon that displays weather information One way to think of this is that a complication is a widget that interacts on your smartwatch when you look at it for information Why a tech company would use the word complication in such a case is beyond me If you're curious, here's Apple's developer's manual