Early Stages of a Mod Brings Android Wear 2.0 Complications to Android Wear 1.0

At Google I/O last year, the big Android Wear 2.0 update was announced and it was when we got our first official look at the changes that were coming with it. This new update, which people are still waiting to get pushed to their smartwatch, comes with improvements such as simplified UI navigation, standalone applications through the new Wear Google Play Store, and a new feature that Google is calling Complications. Complications can be likened to widgets as they display relevant information on the home screen and can be interacted with in various ways when you tap on them.

For a third-party developer to integrate this feature into their watch face, they need to use the Complications API that is currently restricted to Android Wear 2.0. We're unlikely to see Google make this API available to Android Wear 1.x in any official way.

However, this doesn't seem to be stopping a community developer from hacking their way into the code and backporting the feature themselves. At least that is what Reddit user seapip seems to have accomplished.

The mod is still in its early stages and contains a number of bugs that are being squashed right now, but it could be the first steps of Android Wear 1.x supporting the new Complications feature. The mod creates a subclass of CanvasWatchFaceService that implements the Complications methods and then calls the corresponding Complications provider services from external apps. The developer was able to get it working with a modified Complications provider service, but they hope to have it working with all Complications provider services.

If everything works correctly, the end goal is to enable Android Wear 1.x watch face developers to replace import android.support.wearable.complications with import com.seapip.thomas.complications and it should work properly. For those who are curious and want to see the code that makes all of this work, be sure to check out the GitHub project page to see a demo. Even the demo is in early stages, it should give you an idea as to what the developer is aiming for.

Source: /r/AndroidWear

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