Let’s be fair here. It’s not like fetching and setting a new Wear OS watch face is currently particularly daunting. You can easily do it through a companion app on your phone or the Play Store on your Wear OS watch. The latter even has an optional toggle to automatically apply the latest watch face you have downloaded.
Still, thanks to some APK snooping, courtesy of the folks over at Android Authority, we now know that Google is still looking to make the whole watch face application process easier. Apparently, the latest version of the Google Play Store for phones (version 43.9.17-31) has an alternate button that appears once you have clicked the “Install” button on a Wear OS watch face. Once the installation finishes the button swaps to “Set as watch face” automatically. That’s it. It’s all very self-explanatory. All it takes is another click for the watch face to apply to your wearable. This will presumably work with a delay even if your watch and phone aren’t currently nearby.
While the new button is already baked into the APK, and Android Authority was able to make it appear, it is still non-functional. Hopefully, the usability upgrade is right around the corner, though.
