I found this app when I was searching for some alternative to default watchfaces on my Zeblaze Blitz.
This app will let you create an customize in every possible way your live wallpaper. After you set it as wallpaper of your custom launcher, it will be your new watchface.
You need some time to get acquainted to the programming code, but then your only limit will be imagination. The best advantage is that the wallpaper is interactive, and you can set up buttons to implement lots of stuff in your wallpaper, from settings to music player. For advanced users, tasker integration allows even more possibilities.
However, paid version will allow you to import presets made by other users. I will share the ones I created myself.
For live wallpapers to run, your device needs to have the right libraries. Blitz was missing them, but I installed these ones. link
These apks should be working on every Android 5.1 smartwatch.Â
In alternative, you can try out Kustom Widget.
KWLP does have some nice features but has a serious learning curve and still can’t reproduce most of the over 300 X Series faces. The phone/tablet launcher requirement also kills the smartwatch feel.
Yes you need some time to learn to use it to produce something interesting.
However I don’t agree about the “smartwatch feel”. You can use Nova or ADW, and if you want more customizable options even Lightning Launcher. Then you just remove everything from the homescreen, and leave only the wallpaper to be seen.
Also, can you provide a link on the faces that you think cannot be reproduced? I’d like to check it out. Maybe I’ll get some ideas from there.
Oct 30, 2016 16:16:07 GMT 1ceccis said: Yes you need some time to learn to use it to produce something interesting.
However I don't agree about the "smartwatch feel". You can use Nova or ADW, and if you want more customizable options even Lightning Launcher. Then you just remove everything from the homescreen, and leave only the wallpaper to be seen.
Also, can you provide a link on the faces that you think cannot be reproduced? I'd like to check it out. Maybe I'll get some ideas from there.
Nova, ADW, and almost every other launcher, turns an efficient non-linear smartwatch layout into a 5 year old linear layout designed for phones and tablets. So yes, Nova and similar are a significant step backwards and give you something you expect to see on a $20 smartwatch. As far as Lightning Launcher, that takes hours to set up in a fashion that even comes close to a proper smartwatch layout. Even then, the app drawer on all of them is not proper smartwatch friendly. They also require a ton of widgets and extra apps be installed to replicate the lost capability and features. The only thing they do bring to the table is user defined widgets but at the cost of the notifications widget (for which there is no replacement). It’s like trading your Pixel XL for an HTC Dream. The Dream works, but is a far cry from devices today.
Can KLWP have up to 14 different “analog” elements all rotating at different speeds, with most of those being fractional rotation rates? Can it have 7 analog dials all displaying different data in addition to 4 different digital elements? Can it replicate a tourbillon or balance wheel at a proper oscillation rate? Can it do animation?
Well, yes I agree that you need some work to replicate some features that you lose by switching to a custom launcher. In my general thread I listed the most important apps that I used for this purpose.
I think one of the biggest issue that you are talking about is the app drawer that is a little uncomfortable and not optimized for these devices. Well, to be honest, I don’t use that much at all. I set up gestures on the screen to call all apps that I need. D for dialer, W for whatsapp, M for music, and so on. I really don’t use a drawer at all, and all I see is an empty launcher screen with my live wallpaper in background.
To be fair, in the same thread you can find also an app called Floatify that works as an excellent and very elegant substitute to notifications on the smartwatch. Check it out!
Regarding KLWP, the answer of all your questions is definitely yes. I wrote maybe in KWGT thread that biggest downside of it is the absence of animations, that are possible on live wallpapers instead.
To be honest the only things I couldn’t get is the interaction with stock hearth rate sensor and pedometer. There should be some way involving third apps, but actually im not so interested in those features, so I didn’t investigate further. And I couldn’t get an hourly forecast, only daily, without involving tasker as well. Pretty sure there is a solution to everything if you find the right third party app, but I didn’t want to fill my poor 1gb space with tons of apps for this silly purpose, so… whatever.
The app drawer is only a small part, there’s also the launcher settings font size, even accessing settings and so on. Example- Face, email, sms, music, agenda, phone, notifications, quick settings, weather in a linear layout takes far more actions to access every screen than a non-linear layout. With non-linear you can access every screen in three actions or less. If you use a layered non-linear you can access a total of 13 different screens in three or less actions, linear takes as many as six.
I tried for days to replicate two faces with KLWP and KWGT with no success, yet can code the same faces manually in Clockskin and for Wear (WatchMaker) with no problem.
As you said, Lightning Launcher allows non-linear layout. But still, it’s about preferences, and it depends the time you are willing to invest in it. Personally I find gestures a lot more comfortable, so that I actually don’t have any linear or non-linear layout. I just have a gesture for each of the feature you mentioned.
Animations are impossible with KWGT, but I think you missed the Animation tab located in every element in the home of KLWP.
Check out the supermario preset I made, there are some animation examples in there.
However I am pretty familiar with the app now, if you give me a link of those faces with their elements I can give it a try.
Ok, I gave up on the gesture thing and linear layouts years ago because they are pretty much unusable while moving around. If I can’t access key info under moving conditions, the UI is useless to me.
Here’s an example of one of the faces I could not get to work properly. The example is the Clockskin version but in the WatchMaker version every gear rotates at a different rate with only the center gear and hour hand rotating at the same rate. The rates range from once every two days to 4 oscillations per second. Basically the watchmaker version was a near 100% accurate reproduction of the watch movement.
link
Check this out. It’s just an example, I should have png elements of that face to replicate it. But I think it will be helpful. Just go in the Animation tab in each one of the folder you find on the home. You will understand the animation mechanics of KLWP.
However, at the moment I do not recommend using a wallpaper with loop animations. KLWP works at 50 fps when animations are active, so cpu and battery usage are high for a 400 mah device. I suggested the developer to add an option to customize and lower fps rate, so that animations will have a lower impact, and he’s working on it.
