Watchmaker v Facer

General
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I’ve been a Creator Pro and Facer premium user for a long time, but I don’t know if that will continue.

The Facer creator interface is basically a failed first year CS project. Laggy, requires more resources than an aircraft carrier to operate, slow, slow, slow. Did I mention SLOW?

With Watchmaker I can create watch faces on my phone or tablet quickly. Watchmaker has basically the same functionally of Facer, but you are not required to PAY to use any features. Complications, color changing, multiple screens, variables, etc are all there free of cost.

I can edit a watchface and it only takes a few seconds to upload to my watch.

I’ve yet to hit a roadblock with duplicating my Facer faces on Watchmaker.

If you use the Windows subsystem for Android, you can make Watchmaker faces on your computer as well as on mobile devices. This is a big plus for me, as I can create, edit, test, and publish faces regardless of where I’m at.

The one place that Watchmaker falls on it’s face is the lack of an organized forum such as this one. This is a big failure, but I’m leaning towards everything else about Watchmaker overcoming this issue.

And one really major point for me is that Watchmaker reports the proper attitude on my watch, whereas Facer reports it EXACTLY 3.14 times the actual altitude. I’ve brought this up several times in tickets, emails, and the forum, and never even gotten a response from Facer

Opinions, arguments, emotional outbursts?

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I have used both. Not partial to either, will say that I think Facer is much easier in terms of workflow. As far as community goes, watchmaker doesn’t have one aside from Mewe, which is nothing but people requesting watchfaces. In Facer, at least there’s a chance of some registration for your work and even partnership to sell on the platform.

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I’m not a partner. I’m a tiny fish in this ecosystem.

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Ya, I misread it. Still…I will say it must be nice to be a partner, lol.

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I’m not so sure, as that would turn a hobby into a job and might ruin the appeal for me.

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I create faces solely for myself, so if others like them, that’s just a bonus.

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Maybe. I dunno… As a partner, are you contractually compelled to produce faces on a continual basis?

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As I understand it, the best part of being a partner is being able to make money from your watches, and I think that would mean the more faces you make, the more money you can make.

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Yeah, so that would be a great option then. It’s not about making money for me, but it would be nice to have the chance to supplement my income doing something I really enjoy. Even if no one bought my watches, it wouldn’t bother me one bit.

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Intresting Discussion Guys. My Question was going to be why is Facer more Popular. For those that Participate I feel the Community / Forum is a Big deal. I am flirting with Watch Face Studio. There is support there but it is from a just a few respondents. But curved text and Round ended Progress bars are a Draw. There are many things that they do not have. I would never concider Facer Broken. It is being patched up a bit but trying to intergrate all the new watches while serving the Old must be a nightmare. The manufacturer does not have the same problems. Facer is always going to be a bit laggy as it is a simulation on the watch. Like Android running in Windows.

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All have good and bad sides.

Watch Face Studio - lack of tags, depending on complications, no access to Samsung Health, heart rate not working (tap to measure)

Watchmaker - doesn’t have editor for windows and I cannot make watchface on phone
I don’t know how to use “Windows subsystem for Android” and I don’t want to know
Has much more premade stuff and I like it for that

Facer - in the end I like it the best
And I always say that the best part of Facer is this community. Search and you’ll find answers, ask and you’ll be answered.

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I don’t know how you guys, but I had battery drain issues with this other app on the watch as on the phone few years ago. Even worse than with Facer back then. Once my gear S3 came back from repair with restored FW, I never reinstalled it on my watch. Played some more on the phone, but it went always hot before I finished the face. So to me I do not want to experiment with it anymore. I paid the one time premium fee, it was fun, it has great way to make custom ticks and interactive variables, but I could not stand the trouble of editing custom images on PC and getting them back on the phone. I simply prefer to use mouse over thumb for fine work. Now I see your comment about “Windows subsystem for Android”. I have to explore that, but I guess it will be something cumbersome too.

So for now, my playground remains Facer and my personal daily wear watch face was made with Galaxy Watch Designer, 3 years ago and honed to my satisfaction, with some features that Facer would want me to pay for (shortcuts, customizations) and with some that facer does not offer (like big resolution image without downsizing, that I can scroll around the face during years days, steps goal common with s-health). The only free Facer’s feature I miss there, is the phone battery info, which recently does not work on my Facer faces anyway…

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What is Galaxy Watch Designer? Was it for Tizen watches or is it still alive?

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It is free PC tool from Samsung for Tizen watchfaces, later it was renamed to Galaxy Watch Studio, but it was discontinued with introduction of the wearOS to galaxy watch4

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Yes, Tizen had access to all Samsung health data.
Watch 4 and 5 are much better than watch 3 and marriage with Google brought some good stuff but now all health data are top-secrets.
No access to Samsung Health.
I don’t understand why. I’ve tried to find some explanation on the web but there is none.

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They say its due licensing, and that in wearOS you are supposed to use “complications”, that transfer data from other apps on the watchface, rather than direct text fields with dedicated tags.

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Yes, that part I love/hate.

Good thing about using complications is that I can customize the watchface, the bad part is I have to depend on complications somebody made and I never know how long it will be maintained.
Nor Samsung nor Google made those complications.
Data from Samsung (heart/sleep…) do not work. They can be added only as shortcuts.

The only heart / health complications that work at this moment are made by “amoledwatchfaces”. There are no others.
That’s not OK, that kind of complications should be integrated in the watch out-of-the-box.

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I will be always grateful to Facer for make me ecounter alot of friends with same passion for creative watchfaces but the paid tap function make me try other platforms till 2 weeks ago when i start to mess with WFS . The start was a bit hard but the tap finctions and user end coustomization are top for me and the graphic res 450*450 looks like i have a new ticwatch and you are free to start to sell your faces if you think to have the skill for it :smirk: so thx to Facer and more thx to this comunity but at now for me WFS is the future

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19

Oh No please Don’t Go :::)))

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I think the only thing I am wary of here is that you don’t seem to “own” your work and access to your work is contingent on to continue paying for the access. I mean you still own you art and I suppose you could just reconfigure it for another platform but I still would feel better if I had access to the actual files of my completed work.

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