Watch face on WearOS 5

[zyt]

Hi,

I was about to buy Galaxy Watch 7 which comes pre-installed with WatchOS 5. Then I noticed that in the download section of the Juggluco website there is a warning that watch face does not work with WearOS 5.

I read that WearOS 5 discontinued support for old watch face formats and going forward they will no longer be supported. Does it mean that Juggluco installed on WearOS 5 watch will not be able to display the glucose levels on the watch? Is there perhaps some workaround or will it require code rewrite to support Watch Face Format (WFF)?

[j-kaltes]

Programmed watch faces are verboten under WearOS 5. Juggluco’s watch face can’t be implementing as purely formatting, so it can’t be implemented within the WearOS 5 restrictions. There is an adb command to turn off some of the WearOS 5 restrictions for testing purposes. Maybe the watch face can be used after that command.

adb shell device_config put wear_frameworks \
  com.google.android.clockwork.systemui.flags.ambiactive_components_expirable \
  false && adb reboot

See: https://developer.android.com/training/wearables/versions/5/changes#always-on-background-test
An alternative is to use Floating Glucose above another watch face or to make use of a glucose complication inside a complication slot of another watch face, see https://github.com/pachi81/GlucoDataHandler/releases

[zyt]

Thank you for fast reply!

I apologize if my questions are a little bit unclear. I'm still new to the WearOS ecosystem.

Hmm, this makes direct connection between WearOS 5 smartwatch and CGM sensor a little bit tricky but nonetheless possible?
Apparently, GlucoDataHandler can run in standalone mode on the watch as confirmed by main dev here so it should be possible to use the glucose complication as you suggested.

I'm going to proceed with buying GW7 and I will report back in coming weeks.

[zyt]

I successfully sideloaded Juggluco on Galaxy Watch7 (GW7) via ADB and I can confirm that phone-watch connection is super stable.

As suggested by @j-kaltes I installed GlucoDataHandler on GW7 and used the complications from GlucoDataHandler to display glucose values on a default watchface. I can confirm this is working very well even on WearOS 5 and with direct watch-sensor connection.

Direct watch-sensor connection does work, however there are constant disconnects between the watch and the sensor (either status 133 or status 19) and as a result the glucose values are transmitted only every 2 minutes instead of every 1 minute. I read in other thread regarding GW6 where people observed similar behaviour. Is there any way to somehow overcome this problem?
I tried enabling Turbo in sensor settings and also adb shell dumpsys deviceidle whitelist +tk.glucodata but both with no effect.

[zyt]

Sorry forgot to mention it, currently I'm using Freestyle Libre 2 bought in Luxembourg so I suppose that is the EU version.

[j-kaltes]

Can you run the logging version of Juggluco on your watch and send trace.log to me? See: https://www.juggluco.nl/Juggluco/download.html#bugreport

I didn't hear of a once in two minute connection on WearOS galaxy watch with Libre 2.

[zyt]

Sure I can do that, how do switch from normal to debug version and retain the app data? Is it adb install -r <pkg_name>?

[j-kaltes]

yes, just install the apk with adb as usual. The data will be retained as with any other update.

[zyt]

@j-kaltes I just sent you the log file via email.

[j-kaltes]

Your log shows 5 seconds after every received glucose value a status=19 connection error.
Can you send me also a trace.log from your phone? To see that is is not something of the sensor.

The slowness of the watch, could make it different, but on the (also slow) Watch 4 I don’t have these connection errors. Maybe it is caused be a kind of misplaced attempt to save battery power, which in reality causes more battery usage because of the reconnection attempts.

[zyt]

Fair enough, unfortunately I highly doubt that Samsung would be willing to do anything about this. Is there anything else I could do from my end to debug the issue?

[Puderzo]

Just a quick note on this, my son's Galaxy Watch 6 exhibits the same symptoms of 2-3 minutes between values. Doesn't matter if it's Libre 2 or 3. I seem to remember that the same was true also after we updated his previous Galaxy Watch 4 Classic to Wear OS 4, so I think this is some kind of attempt to limit bluetooth usage in the name of battery optimization.

[j-kaltes]

I have Watch 4 updated to WearOS 4.0 and Juggluco on that watch receives a glucose value every minute from Libre 2 sensors.

[Puderzo]

My bad, might have been just the change of watch then. Perhaps we should go back to using the Watch 4 Classic instead then :) The reason we got the Watch 6 was we wanted better battery life, but that has yet to materialize, instead it appears to sometimes be worse, even though it has a larger battery and should be "better optimized".

[zyt]

I managed to get my hands on Libre 3 (DE version). I tested direct watch-sensor connection and I am able to get glucose values every minute as long as the connection remains stable (no interference in 2.4Ghz range)...