As of July 24, 2025, Facer launched a major update to support the latest version of Wear OS (Wear OS 6) with the full Facer experience. There however has been some confusion around which watches are supported by Facer with which versions of Wear OS and why certain watches don’t (yet) get full Facer support.
This article will cover the following:
- Watches getting Wear OS 6 (and the new, full Facer experience)
- The difference between Facer on versions of Wear OS (Facer fully works on older versions of Wear OS too so more confusion)
- What Facer does and does not control (we control our app, not Wear OS or Device makers)
What Facer does and does not control
First off, as much as Facer works with Google to help improve the experience of watch faces on Wear OS, Facer ultimately does not control what features are included in Wear OS. When Google went from Wear OS 4 to Wear OS 5 and removed capabilities required by our legacy app to work (and any app offering watch faces at the time), we had no way to make updates to Facer that could work around those changes to keep offering our service (see below on Wear OS 5). While our new app works on Wear OS 6, we also have no control over Google and/or Wear OS 5 to add support for our app to that version of Wear OS - it’s only in Wear OS 6. Read more about the history here.
Facer also does not control when or which devices will get the Wear OS 6 update or any Wear OS updates. That is up to the original manufacturers (i.e. Google Pixel, Samsung, OnePlus, Oppo, Mobvoi TicWatch, etc.). We do anticipate that watches which originally shipped out of the box at launch with Wear OS 5 will update to Wear OS 6, but again, we cannot know for sure or when. We recommend that consumers reach out to their watch’s support team to ask and check out those company’s forums to find more information.
Watches getting Wear OS 6
As we do hear about Wear OS watches getting the Wear OS 6 update, we will note them here in BOLD when we get a chance! We will also provide news or notes if we hear of any form of a Wear OS 6 release in a Beta or developer version!
- Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 (shipping with Wear OS 6 1 to consumers July 25, 2025)
- Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic (shipping with Wear OS 6 1 to consumers July 25, 2025)
- Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra (updated 4 to support Wear OS 6 starting on July 22, 2025)
- Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 Classic (Wear OS 6 starting roll out Oct 1, 2025)
- Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 (Wear OS 6 starting roll out Oct 1, 2025)
- Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 series (reports of Wear OS 6 test as seen in June, 2025)
- Google Pixel Watch 2 & 3 (Wear OS 6 starting roll out Oct 1, 2025)
- Google Pixel Watch 1 (report indicated confirmed future support for Wear OS 6)
- OnePlus Watch 2, 2R, 3 (report 1 indicated OnePlus confirmed eventual Wear OS 6 support with no timing details)
- Oppo Watch X2 (no reports yet, only Google AI Search analysis that it will likely come)
Facer Experience on Different Versions of Wear OS
Wear OS 4 and earlier
The full Facer experience has been available since the earliest versions of Wear OS - even when it was Android Wear! On Wear OS 4 and earlier, you can download a Facer app on your watch and that will work in conjunction with the Facer app on your phone to sync faces from the Facer service. This works for free faces, faces individually purchased, as well as for syncing all faces when you have a Premium subscription.
The Facer app for your watch can be found in the Google Play Store (on the watch and the phone) and after installed, it appears in your list of apps on device. Also, when the Facer watch app installs, a single Facer watch face is installed that MUST be set as the current active face in order to have any Facer faces appear on your watch. You can find this Facer face in the watch face picker (press and hold on the watch face to bring up the watch face picker - the Facer face may be in the section for “downloaded” faces). The Facer face has a Facer logo and the first time you set it as your active face, you’ll see that Facer logo face as the full watch face but when you sync your next face from the Facer phone app, the new face you have selected will appear automatically on your watch after syncing completes (may take up to a minute).
Just remember, if you change to a non-Facer face, to go back to Facer, you must go back and set that Facer face (with the Facer logo) as your active face first!
If you have a watch that shipped with Wear OS 3 4 or earlier that updates to Wear OS 5, this legacy Facer experience continues to work with our massive catalog!
Wear OS 5
This is where things got interesting. You can read more about the history here (link to our news article). To summarize, on Wear OS 5, Google removed the capabilities that a watch face app like ours used to sync and set faces - and we were not the only ones impacted - this impacted everyone doing watch face apps. We worked tirelessly over the past year with Google to come up with new, more secure, efficient and robust ways to offer our service but the changes added by Google to enable this was limited to Wear OS 6. (The caveat here being that if you were on a Wear OS 4 watch that updates to Wear OS 5 but already had our app, that legacy Facer app would continue to work but new Wear OS 5 watches did not have the capabilities and could not get our legacy app).
On Wear OS 5, you can use our Facer phone app to see a selection of individual faces we separately published (one at a time) to the Google Play Store that work on Wear OS 5. These faces were developed (rebuilt from the ground up) using the first version of the Watch Face Format that Google exclusively supported on Wear OS 5 watches.
So, our Facer app for Wear OS 5 is really just a single place where you can easily locate all available Facer faces and get updates on the latest happenings as well as notifications for when your phone can be supported with Facer (after it gets Wear OS 6). But the sad part of course is that there were a limited number of faces we could individually recreate and publish, you cannot easily see all of the faces you have purchased, and additionally, there is no option to be a subscriber.
Wear OS 6 and up
Upgrades to Facer landed July 24th 2025 adding back full support for Wear OS 6! That’s hundreds of thousands of faces available again for your watches! We expect newer watches that shipped with Wear OS 5 to get this Wear OS 6 upgrade and some have already received it. And the latest watches launching this summer and fall are all coming with Wear OS 6 out of the box (i.e. Galaxy Watch 8, Pixel Watch 4, etc).
The experience on Wear OS 6 is similar to Wear OS 4 and earlier with a few key nuances.
First of all, the overall performance is better in terms of battery life but that does come at a trade off with fewer advanced capabilities for now (i.e. no 3D faces, less interactivity with faces, some missing data/complications, sounds, etc).
In terms of how you set up and operate Facer on your Wear OS 6 watch, it is similar to Wear OS 4 and earlier. There is a Facer app for your watch that needs to be installed. When this is installed, it asks for your permission to set watch faces and it also installs a Facer logo face similar to Wear OS 4 and earlier AND you need to make sure this face is set as the active face in order to sync other Facer faces.
Subsequent faces sync’d via the Facer phone app will automatically appear on the watch - same as Wear OS 4 and earlier. However, if you set a face as your active face that is not from the Facer phone app and then want to go back to using Facer, you will have to find the Facer face in your watch face picker - and this time it isn’t the Facer logo face, it is simply the last Facer face you sync’d. Once you set a Facer face as your active face again, you can then set other Facer faces just from your phone without having to take additional steps on your watch.