Wearable Widgets turns your phone’s app widgets into Wear OS watch face complications

It may be the most silly idea for some, but it may be the most interesting idea for others. Wearable Widgets, an application that turns your phone widgets into Wear OS (Android Wear) watch faces, has added support for complications. So instead of replacing your entire watch with a widget, you can leave any design you want and choose a widget from your phone as a complication within it. How well does it work? I tried it to find out.

I started by installing Wearable Widgets on both my phone and my watch (you can search for it in the Play Store on your watch or install it through a web browser). Then, on any watch face that supports complications, I hit one of them and scrolled down to find Wearable Widgets between options. This provided a list of all available widgets on my phone grouped by application.

Left: Wearable Widgets between complications. Middle / Right: Scroll through the widgets.

The first graphic that came to mind is Fitbit’s main 1×1 target. I thought it would be perfect as a complication. However, I forgot that the widget displays a small amount of text below it, which then pushes the circle up to be off-center.

Add Fitbit Primary Target widget.

I tried some other 1×1 widgets that sounded great as complications. One of these was the SmartThings routines. On the phone, when I choose to place this widget on my home screen, a small settings screen opens allowing me to select the routine to apply. I wondered if and how the Wearable Widgets could handle it and it turns out it does quite well. A power-up message on my phone flashes, so I grabbed the Pixel and SmartThings widget setting screen. I chose the routine I wanted. Since then, a simple tap on it on my watch has turned it on.

Add SmartThings Routine widget.

However, the same misalignment happened here. The widget has text below it, so the icon goes up a bit and stays off center. Other widgets from LIFX, Wemo, Gmail, Drive and others had the same problem. Some widgets that do not have text display well, although they are still largely pixelated.

Left: Widget LIFX off center. Middle / right: Central graphics from Todoist and Shazam.

The other side effect of using Wearable Widgets is that it shows a persistent alert on your phone. Fortunately, you can minimize or disable it altogether if you do not like the constant reminder.

Overall, the case works, but it ‘s a little annoying to see 1×1 graphics off center when there is text below them and the icons are so pixelated. Once these issues are resolved, Wearable Widgets have a nice but very specialized idea.

I can’t imagine using any widget as a complication other than Fitbit’s daily tracking goal, but I guess many users would like to have some specific tweaks or their own Tasker widgets as easily accessible complications to their watch faces. Sterling Udell, the developer behind the app, also shared a lot more widget ideas that could work well as well as complications so check it out before dismissing it as a ridiculous idea.

Wearable Widgets are free – in-app purchases allow you to use more than one widget at a time – so it’s easy to check and decide if you want more or not.