Ever since third-party apps vanished, browsing Reddit comfortably on a smartwatch felt practically dead. I wanted a modern, buttery-smooth client that felt truly native on Wear OS—so I built Red for Reddit.
It's completely free, tracker-free, and open-source under GPLv3.
Key Features on the Watch:
Continuous Always-On Display (AOD) Reading: When your wrist goes down, the exact post, article, or comment tree stays visible in a pure GPU-monochrome high-contrast mode (1Hz AMOLED friendly, zero screen blur, massive battery savings).
Smooth Image Carousel: Swipe through multi-photo galleries with your finger (HorizontalPager) complete with Instagram-style pagination dots and counter.
Native Video Player: Integrated ExoPlayer supporting HLS and MP4 streams with audio unmute and loop.
Rotary & Bezel Support: Smooth haptic scrolling using Horologist Rotary on Galaxy Watch rotating bezels and Pixel Watch crowns.
Comment Tree & Interaction: Upvote, downvote, save, reply via on-screen keyboard or voice-to-text, and edit/delete your own comments.
Glanceable Tiles: 3 interactive Tiles for your carousel (Personal Feed, Saved Posts, and Flash Headlines—no useless karma widgets).
Search & Filter: Search communities and posts by Sort (Hot, New, Top, Relevance) and Time range (Day, Week, Month, All).
Autonomous Long-Term Session: Sign in once with the companion app; the watch maintains and refreshes its own session autonomously without needing your phone nearby.
Multilingual: Automatic locale detection (English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian) including relative timestamps ("2h ago", "hace 2h", "il y a 2h", etc.).
11 Years ago I published an app called Krona Sunlight, "The Ultimate Weather Forecast Interactive Multi-Screen Watch Face". 🤓
11 Years ago - developed on the original Moto 360
6 years ago it all fell apart. Apple bought the weather provider the app relied on, Google changed what a watch face was allowed to do, and I had moved to the US on a visa that didn't let me work on commercial apps. Meanwhile, clones of the app popped up online.
4 months ago I got my Green Card, dug out the old source code, and started over. I rewrote my beloved watch face for today's weather providers, worked around Google's restrictions, and turned it into a full watch app with its own watch face and quick-access tiles.
Then I finished something I'd been asked for years ago: a marine version for someone with a boat. That became Krona Tidewater, with tides, waves, wind and a verdict on whether conditions suit your sport at your spot.
And since I'm an astrophysicist, I wanted to know whether modern watches and phones can predict when a satellite pass will actually be visible. They can, so now there's also Krona Moonrise, for the sun, moon, stars, eclipses, meteor showers and satellite passes.
What makes the Krona apps different?
They're watch-first. One colorful ring shows the next 24 hours at a glance:
Krona Sunlight · Temperature & rain · Wind & gusts · Humidity & UV: Sunny or cloudy, wet or dry? When does the rain start, how heavy will the snow get, and is tomorrow warmer or colder than today?
Krona Moonrise · Sun & moon · Satellite pass · Compass: How clear will the stars be tonight? Which satellite passes over next? When does the moon set, the sun rise, the next eclipse begin, and how many meteors will the shower bring?
Krona Tidewater · Tide & verdict · Wind & waves · Shore weather: What's the wind doing at my surf spot? Is the tide low or high, how big is the swell and what's its period, and are conditions any good?
It's all right there on your wrist. Use the ring as your watch face, add the app's tiles beside whatever face you wear, or open the watch app and tap the center to cycle through the three screens.
Krona started as watch faces. When I reworked them into standalone apps, I made them work on the phone too, with home-screen widgets, and those widgets became the watch tiles. So all three apps now run on Android phones and Wear OS watches, but they were built for the watch first.
Data Providers
I'm very passionate about data visualization, but the underlying data needs to be reliable. I didn't want to build yet another app that shows the same free forecast everyone else shows. Krona uses professional data sources, refreshes often, and does a lot of the math right on your watch and phone.
You choose between three forecast providers: Open-Meteo comes with the app, you can plug in your own OpenWeatherMap key, or you subscribe and get Apple Weather.
With your own OpenWeatherMap key or Apple Weather, the full forecast refreshes every 15 minutes (Open-Meteo every 3 hours). Your own key also brings OpenWeatherMap's minute-by-minute rain for the next hour.
The part I'm proudest of: Krona Sunlight can provide minute-by-minute rain prediction for the next 4 hours - almost worldwide (up to about 72° north). It comes from Rainbow Weather: radar where there is radar, satellite imagery where there isn't, at about 1 km resolution and updated every 10 minutes. In Germany, Austria and Norway the even more precise national weather services' own radar takes the first hour. Krona's imminent rain prediction in Germany is crazy accurate for example. (Most other apps only have minute rain in a handful of countries.)
Everything in the sky is computed on the device: sun, moon and planets, eclipses (from NASA's eclipse data), meteor showers (International Meteor Organization), satellite orbits (CelesTrak) and the aurora (from NOAA's forecasts).
Satellite passes aren't just "when is it overhead" - it checks whether you can actually see it (lit by the sun, dark sky, bright enough, no clouds in the way) and rates the pass from Invisible to Excellent.
The clouds are the part I haven't seen anywhere else: it traces your line of sight to the moon, a planet or a satellite through the low, mid and high cloud layers, using the finest weather model for where you are - NOAA's HRRR at 3 km over the US, DWD's ICON-D2 at about 2 km over central Europe, and ICON-EU or global ICON everywhere else.
Krona Tidewater
Krona Tidewater (experimental)
This one might still need some work to be actually useful.
Waves, swell and sea temperature from Open-Meteo's marine models, tides from WorldTides, and the weather at your spot's exact coordinates - not some grid cell a few miles inland.
It reads the coastline off the map and works out which way your beach faces, so it knows onshore from offshore wind and swell.
The verdict comes from your own ranges for your sport (surf, kite, windsurf, paddle, swim or sail), not from someone else's idea of a good day.
Most of this data isn't free
Here's the part nobody likes: Apple Weather, Rainbow's minute-by-minute rain and the commercial weather, marine and map feeds all bill by volume once you're past a small free allowance - and refreshing the full forecast every 15 minutes, for every user, adds up fast. On top of that I run the servers that fetch, cache and combine it all (and build the cloud tiles for Moonrise). So I tried to keep it fair: the free parts are really free, and the subscriptions pay for the expensive data.
Krona Sunlight - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lordskippy.kronasunlight - $4.99 once, with Open-Meteo forecasts included. Got your own OpenWeatherMap key? Plug it in at no extra cost. The subscription is $2.99/month or $17.99/year (7-day free trial) and brings Apple Weather, minute-by-minute rain worldwide, the full forecast every 15 minutes, and the widgets and tiles.
Krona Moonrise - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lordskippy.kronamoonrise - free. The whole sky, the clouds along your line of sight, satellite passes, star visibility, the aurora, plus widgets and tiles - no subscription needed. Premium Weather is $0.99/month or $9.49/year (7-day free trial) and adds rain, dew and frost to the ring.
Krona Tidewater - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lordskippy.kronatidewater - free at one fixed spot (Hossegor, France), with the whole app, watch included. The subscription is $2.99/month or $17.99/year (7-day free trial) and lets you pin your own spots, plus the widgets and tiles.
One subscription covers your phone and your watch. Prices are in US dollars; Google Play shows them in your local currency.
Title: I made a free, open-source Action button remapper for the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 (single, double and long press)
The orange Action button on the Ultra 2 only lets you pick a workout, which I never use. So I built **Ultra2 Remapper*\*: you can set the single press, double press and long press separately to:
- open any app (mine opens Gear Tracker II)
- play / pause, next track, previous track (works with Spotify and anything else that's playing on the watch)
- volume up / down
The emergency siren (hold 5–6 s) still works as normal.
**How it works:*\* the Action button never sends normal key events, so the usual accessibility-based remappers can't see it. Instead, Samsung hands every press to a system setting that names which app should handle it (Samsung Health by default). You point that setting at Ultra2 Remapper once over adb, and the watch tells the app whether it was a single, double or long press. No accessibility service, and no battery drain from listening in the background.
**Setup:*\* one-time adb over wireless debugging (4 commands, all in the README). After that you change mappings in the app on the watch.
C'est avec désespoir que je vous écris ici. J'ai vu qu'il existait des solutions pour pouvoir connecter son téléphone qui est en ROM chinoise avec une smartwatch sur Wear OS. Dans mon cas la Google pixel watch 5.
Il me reste 14 jours avant de devoir la renvoyer pour profiter de ma garantie.
J'ai en ma possession le Oppo Find X10 Pro Max.
J'ai tout tenté le transfert via un autre appareil Android, via des tools mais en vain...
Pourtant il est noté sur plusieurs Reddit que cela fonctionne avec de la bidouille.
Alors est-ce moi le souci? Est-ce que j'ai bien fait les process? Je ne sais pas, j'en demande votre aide.
Brief Description of app's features: Tap a tile or a complication on your watch and talk. Your phone turns it into text, offline, and saves it as a Markdown note in a folder you pick (an Obsidian vault works great).
Cost: Free. No ads, no account, no subscription. A one-time Pro unlock may come later.
I've wanted this for a long time: tap my watch, say the thought out loud, and later find it as text, not as an audio file I will never listen to again. So I built it. It's called Murlivo.
Why I built it
My best ideas show up when I'm walking, cooking or driving, and my phone is in my pocket. Every watch recorder I tried gave me audio files, and the transcription apps I tried wanted an account and my recordings on their servers. I wanted text, on my own phone, with nothing uploaded.
What it does
One tap from a tile or a complication starts recording. It keeps going with the screen off and your wrist down.
Your phone does the transcription itself. Your audio is never uploaded and there's no account. The speech model downloads once on first run; after that it even works in airplane mode.
Long recordings work too: a meeting, a dictation, a walk-and-talk. With the phone nearby, it transcribes while you speak, so the text is ready soon after you stop.
Phone out of range? The watch keeps the recording and sends it when the phone is back.
Notes are plain Markdown, one file per day, with the audio next to it. Point it at your Obsidian vault and they just show up.
I add you to the test, usually within a day. The form's thank-you page has the two install links (bookmark it); open them once you're added, then install Murlivo on your phone and from the Play Store on your watch (same Google account). Play shows it as "com.odezio.murlivo (unreviewed)" until Google finishes its review; that's normal.
Open it on the phone, pick a folder, and let the speech model download once: about 265 MB (or 150 MB for the lighter one), so Wi-Fi is best.
You need an Android 11+ phone, and a Wear OS 3+ watch if you want the wrist part. I've tested it on an OPPO Watch X3, an OPPO Find X9 Ultra and an Honor phone, so I'd really love to hear from Pixel Watch, Galaxy Watch and TicWatch owners.
What would help me most
Does recording from the tile and the complication feel quick on your watch?
Try a longer recording (10 minutes or more) and tell me how long the text takes.
Record from the phone app too, and from the watch with the phone far away (then bring it back).
Does the note land where you expect, in your folder or your vault?
Your language: the app is in English, German, Spanish, French and Portuguese, and those are the languages I've tested for transcription. Others are in there, but Japanese and Korean are still weak.
About privacy, honestly: your audio and transcripts never get uploaded by Murlivo; they stay on your devices and in the folder you choose. The app does send usage stats and crash reports under a random install ID (event names, counts and timings; no name, no email, never audio or text), and you can switch that off on the About Murlivo screen in Settings.
I'll be around to answer every comment and I'll post updates here as I fix things. Thanks a lot for reading!
What it does: guides each breath with haptic taps on your wrist, one pattern for inhale and another for exhale, so you can close your eyes and follow it without looking at the screen. Techniques include box breathing, 4-7-8, extended exhale, cyclic sighing and alternate nostril. Sessions start from the phone or the watch.
I'd love to hear which watches feel best with the haptics. Vibration strength varies a lot between models.
AI chat that runs on your watch. Talks straight to your provider. No account, no server in the middle, no analytics. Paste your key, pick a model, go.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, plus any OpenAI-compatible endpoint.
Why
Every AI app on Wear OS either mirrored my phone or assumed my watch only deserves 3 lines. Small screen ≠ dumb answer. I wanted to read actual technical stuff on my wrist.
What works
Streaming with Stop, Retry, Edit. Editing is linear: replaces the message, kills everything after it, regenerates. No branches.
Markdown done right: headings, lists, quotes, code blocks, tables laid out for a round screen.
LaTeX + Unicode math. Wide formulas pan sideways instead of getting shrunk to mush. Matrices, cases, aligned equations.
Keyboard and voice, both first-class.
Swap provider or model mid-chat, one continuous history.
Keys locked in Android Keystore AES-GCM. No plaintext fallback.
History stays on the watch.
What's rough
Debug-signed APK. Android will complain. Not store-grade.
adb sideload only, no Play Store.
Everything tested on emulator (Wear OS 5, round 466×466). Never touched a real watch. Voice untested on hardware.
Math is source-fallback, no native typesetting. Readable and pannable, not pretty.
curious what people here actually miss on their watch in 2026. the basics are covered now (maps, music, payments, fitness) but every time i look for something specific i end up with an app thats half done or abandoned.
for me its mostly small productivity stuff, quick capture of a thought, simple timers that dont need the phone, that kind of thing.
what would you install tomorrow if it existed? or whats the app you use but wish was way better?
Hello everyone. I’ve been using a Xiaomi Watch 5 for nearly 5–6 months now, but its sluggish performance is becoming increasingly frustrating. Is there an app available—similar to those used on smartphones—that allows for one-tap system cleanup? Regarding the ECG feature: I live in Türkiye, and it still hasn’t been enabled here. The watch’s Singapore-region product page indicates that this feature is supported. When I enable power-saving mode, the feature appears, but I cannot activate it; the system prompts me to switch back to normal mode, yet once I do, the feature disappears entirely. Is there any way to enable this without voiding the warranty? Thanks in advance.
Hey everyone!
We designed a very special game exclusively for WearOS devices - a pirate adventure you can play with your whole body. Designed for kids, Teacher Approved - let us know what you think :)
Dev here. Posted about KeyUp a while back (walkie-talkie for Wear OS and Android, turn the crown or raise your wrist to talk, screen off works on my Pixel Watch 3). Haven’t posted an update since 88 or so. We went through a bunch of versions in testing without publishing them, so if your watch jumps a few numbers at once, that’s why. This one is on Play now.
What’s new since then, watch first:
Music. There’s a switch that pauses your music while you talk (for people using volume booster apps, where the normal ducking doesn’t help). It had a bug where the music sometimes never came back. Fixed. And it now comes back the moment you stop talking. The only exception is Open mic, which keeps the music paused for a few seconds between sentences so it doesn’t stutter on and off. If you lift your wrist and say nothing, your music doesn’t even pause anymore.
Call for help. Cancelling with “it was a false alarm” takes two taps now, I had one too many thumbs land on it. The stuff under the talk button is just info now, the buttons moved to Controls. If your call reached nobody it says so, in red, and keeps saying it for ten minutes. Dropping your wrist before the send finished used to lose the result, that’s fixed too.
Stop KeyUp is one short line with Stop and Cancel on screen without scrolling. Missed talks pause while someone is talking live and pick up after. Incoming calls say who’s calling for TalkBack users. Signing in from your phone only works with a phone that’s actually next to the watch.
Phone side: voice notes have a cancel button, photos stop coming out sideways, and both music switches live under You > Sound > Music and other apps now.
Still a closed beta on Play, still free. If you want in: https://keyupradio.com/join-beta/ fill out the form, join the group and download!
Galaxy Watch people especially, I only own a Pixel Watch 3 and a Galaxy Watch 4, so if the crown or the bezel does something weird on yours I want to hear about it.
This issue started yesterday for no reason, I didn't download anything, I cleared cache partition, I cleared samsung health cache, restarted the watch using both buttons, checked for software updates, confirmed wear os 8 is up to date, checked the installed apps list in galaxy wearable, checked for google play services and launcher apps, tested opening apps through galaxy wearable and it worked, changed the watch face, checked talkback and confirmed it was off, tried opening battery settings, and reconnected the watch after it disconnected. Any help?
Hi everyone! I'm Marty, the creator of WristBridge. I'd love a few volunteers to help make it easier to use.
Name of App: WristBridge
Brief Description of app's features: Speak a question to your watch, get an AI answer, ask follow-ups, and reopen saved conversations.
Cost: Free during this beta; no ChatGPT subscription needed. Normal internet/data charges apply.
Play Store Link: Private Google Play internal testing; the installation link is supplied to selected volunteers.
We're testing Version 4: installation, sign-in, questions, follow-ups and finding saved chats again. This is our first outside group, so we're especially interested in where setup gets confusing.
You'll need a compatible Wear OS watch, an Android phone and internet access. We'll check your exact watch model and software version before selection; not every Wear OS watch is supported.
Limits are up to 20 questions per account daily, with 40 shared across the entire beta. Follow-ups and some interrupted attempts count; limits reset at midnight UTC.
Interested and 18 or older? Email mcook@grlabs.ai with your watch model, Wear OS version and paired phone model. Please don't post your email or login details here.
Selected volunteers receive the guide, terms and privacy notice before accepting. Conversation text is processed online and saved for reopening; please use non-sensitive test questions. This is experimental software, so don't rely on it as your only copy of anything important.
FlightID is my latest app and it is currently in closed testing phase. Free to download for the next one week. Would love to hear feedback and address issues that might come up.
The idea behind the app is, point your wrist (watch) towards any plane in the sky and get instantaneous details about the aircraft on your watch.
The primary use mode of the app is Sky Lens mode that allows you to use your watch like a lens scanner and point it towards aircraft to get it's details. It also shows you the direction of nearest aircraft and guides you towards it. Within close proximity it gives precise guidance to point your wrist towards the aircraft.
Other modes of the app include -
Sky Radar that shows a Radar PPI indication of aircraft in selected range.
List of aircrafts with details in the selected range
Compass calibration page
Range of detection can be varied using crown rotation in Sky Lens /Radar modes and can also be changed from settings page.
I've only tested it on my watch (Ticwatch Pro 5) and have had limited opportunity to actually spot aircraft in real time. However I've had fair success in identification when I could spot them.
Compass calibration is going to be of great importance for the app to work accurately.
Steps To Install-
Starting today I've also launched a Phone Helper (Companion) app to allow easy installation of wear os apps to watch directly from phone, especially the apps which are in closed testing.
Since this app is also in closed testing, please follow these steps-
From within my helper app, scroll down to Flight ID app
Tap the opt in button next to Flight ID app and opt in from the opened link
Thereafter return to the app and tap on install button next to Flight ID app
Play store listing of the app will be directly opened on your paired watch, install the app on watch from there.
Sorry for this lengthy process but once the helper app is out of closed testing, the process of installing other closed testing apps directly on the watch will be very streamlined.
Thanks in advance to all the testers!
⚠️⚠️⚠️ EDIT : I beleive many of you could not download the FlightID app. If you have already joined the Google Group, please open this link in a web browser on or your phone or desktop https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.neolabs.flightid
From the Play Store page on browser, select your watch from the list of devices and press install.
I’m a solo developer finishing a Wear OS app called Solar Phase. It is a complication (and a small companion app), not a full watch face. It shows the current solar phase and progress through the day: twilight, golden hour, solar noon, and so on, based on your location. You keep using your existing watch face and just add this complication to a slot.
Google requires a closed test with at least 12 opted-in testers for 14 days before I can publish to production. I have one (me). I need 11 more people who already own a Wear OS watch (Galaxy Watch, Pixel Watch, etc.) and are willing to install it and try it.
What you would do:
Click an opt-in link
Install the app on your watch
Add the complication to a slot and use it for a bit
Tell me if anything is wrong
Stay opted in for 14 days
The app is free for testers. If you have a Wear OS watch and are willing to help, reply or DM me and I’ll send the link. Thanks.
I wanted to dismiss/clear notifications with a gesture on my Pixel Watch without having to swipe each one away, so I made an app called Flick, because laziness.
With your watch awake and unlocked, open your notifications and flick your middle finger with your thumb on your watch hand. Like you're flicking a booger. One recognized flick dismisses the notification centered on the screen.
The setup is simple once installed: open Flick, grant the required permissions, and turn it on. It includes a built-in gesture, so there’s no required recording or training session. Optional personal training is available if needed.
A few things to know:
It’s free, with no ads or account.
It uses the watch’s motion sensors, not a microphone or camera.
Processing stays on the watch. Notification content isn’t saved or uploaded.
It requires Accessibility and notification access.
You currently need a computer and wireless ADB to install the APK directly on your watch. It isn’t on the Play Store.
Completely vibe coded. I have no skills lol. (see laziness above).
This is an early beta. The matching development build worked fluidly in my latest Pixel Watch 3 test, but the downloadable APK still needs fresh-install testing. The built-in gesture was trained using my movements, so it may miss flicks or accidentally recognize other movements for someone else.
If you try it, I’d appreciate hearing your watch model, Wear OS version, and whether it misses flicks or dismisses anything unintentionally. Battery feedback would also help. Feel free to try it on any other device that has gestures, but I only made this for my Pixel watch, so I can't say it'll work for anyone else.
