I have made a few designs that I like for my GW5 but other than the step counter and battery life complication, all other complications do not refresh as expected. The Heart rate complication is the most important to me but it is not accurate in real time.
I’ve tried custom complications but they don’t work either on my watch, therefore I’ve canceled my pro membership!
I also feel that the design program lacks allot of basic tools that are offered in most any graphic program software like alignment and group tools etc. I thought upgrading to pro would add these basic tools but it does not.
Does anyone have a solution or work around to the complication issues?
First off let me mention that in Facer the heart rate does not show live current BPM. The heart rate is only updated on time intervals somewhere between every 10-15 minutes. That is also the way the other data is done in Facer. Personally, I don’t worry about the heart rate showing in Facer since the watches have the tiles you can always have the Samsung Health widget just one swipe to the right. When I want to know what my heart rate is, I’m like you and I want to know the current reading, not one from a few minutes ago.
IMHO, it’s not worth even offering the option of a HR complication if it doesn’t show current info. I put it on my faces because I want to know the status without needing to touch my watch. The weather data also doesnt change at all, temp or location, again rendering it useless
Hi @markaccardi
Heartbeat is important to me too.
I think what you’re complaining about is another gift Samsung has given us by switching from Tizen to Wear OS.
I have 2 Samsung Tizens (GW & GW3) and they both give me the heartbeat in real time. Often verified by turning the bezel.
The beat of the Samsung tile and that of the clock face match perfectly.
There IS a solution I mentioned a few times before:
download and install “Heart rate complication” from Google Play (made by amoledwatchfaces)
use that complication for heartrate
Allow it to work in the background:
On phone: settings - battery and device care - tap battery - tap background usage limits - tap never sleeping apps - tap + and add “Heart Rate Complication” to never sleeping apps
here is one of my watchfaces, you can see how it looks like (watch video because Facer cannot show complication on preview, pics now show battery instead real complications):
I saw your post before I posted my issue and I installed the HR complication but I can’t pick it as a custom complication, I dont know if it’s something different in the GW5 OS compared to GW4. When I tap on the custom comp 1, it only shows battery specs and tips and doesnt offer me a choice to select the HR Comp.
When I get to the edit screen, tapping on the complication doesn’t do anything, just blinks for a second and does nothing, I’m thinking this is a facer issue.
Just for the sake of it, I made a few faces using Samsung watchface studio and followed your directions and it works perfectly
I believe this is a problem with the FACER software not being fully compatible with GW5, As I mentioned in my 1st post, the weather doesn’t refresh at all either unless I reload the watchface.
OK, now I can speak from experience and not just assuming from owning a Galaxy Watch 4. I now have the Galaxy watch 5 Pro and all my complications are refreshing exactly like they do on my GW4 Classic and my GW 1st gen.
As far as I can tell they are. I’m using one complication to estimate the distance walked off of the step count and it’s working just like the GW4 does.
Can you please add some third party complication, not something from Facer but some complication from the watch, like sunrise, weather, google fit stats or anything else and confirm that they work on Watch 5 (on Facer watchface) ?
Also, do you feel that buying watch 5 was worth it? Is it better than watch 4?
They’ll all work if your using Watch Face Studio, Thay’s what I’m using now, I find it’s a better design program with all of the same features of facer plus a few extras like alignment tools and group tools.
It’s a free download and there is no extra charge for customizable complications, if you want to make a complication customizable, you simply check a box!
It works 100% with my GW5
It also installs the face directly to your watch without needing a third party app like facer.
It’s not a web based designer, it installs to your PC like Photoshop.
The main difference is that you don’t publish your designs but that’s not why I started making faces in the 1st place, it’s not like I’m getting paid for my synced deigns anyways,
I’ve tried WFS, didn’t like it, I like Facer better. Maybe because I’m just used to Facer.
WFS is all based on complications that users can add/choose and I cannot do math with them, cannot play with them.
I cannot, for example, use weather variable “if weather is sunny then show pic1”.
I can only add complication and ask user to set it to weather, cannot mess around with it.
Or I’m just using it wrong.
And as I always say: I like this community, I didn’t know anything when I designed my first watchface and learned everything I know here.
I haven’t needed to set up the weather that way, I find that the icons that are brought in from the weather app are just fine for my needs, My issue with facers weather comp is that it doesn’t work at all on my GW5, and not being able to use custom comps only compounds the issue.
I’ve only been playing around with face design for a week so I didn’t have enough time to fall in love with any particular program, I started with facer and made a dozen faces over the weekend but when I got out in the real world on Monday I found out that most of the fancy complications I designed didn’t work because they don’t refresh.
It’s a small learning curve to switch over to WFS but until facer updates and becomes compatible with GW5 I’m staying on this platform.
OK, this is the face I am wearing now.
MAG 2036
Everything is staying updated correctly and staying with the OpenWeather app on my phone.
As for worth buying the GW5 Pro and is it better than the GW4, yes to both questions. My GW4 Classic will last on a single charge 34-36 hours pretty consistently. The new GW5 Pro has already gone 36 hours since it’s last (and only) charge and is sitting at 58% battery level. So if it keeps going like it has it should be in the 60-70+ hour range pretty easily. I have it set to monitor my sleep, SpO2 levels and snoring detection. I’m guessing the battery life will be pretty close to my GW 1st gen that is running Tizen.
UPDATE
It has now been a full 48 hours since being charged and the battery level is setting at 51%.
Make sure wifi is off, I turned it on and accidently left it on for uploading my faces and I didn’t get a day out of a full charge. Now I only turn it on when I need it and the battery life is fantastic again…
