list of things you can do in a watchface

[Jackall Digital]

I would like to have a list of possible things one can do with a watch face in one place, post your observations. I don't know if this is specific to any Watch Face making tool (I'm using MiBandWFTool 1.4.2, only raw image mode because the pallete image mode doesn't look as sharp) but here are the things I observed while making watchfaces.

• ~320KB .bin file size limit , it's less of an issue in pallete mode but depending on your design it can be an issue in raw image mode.

• Black background increases battery life, but you can also have your elements have a black background to make the .bin filesize smaller.

• No real layering of different elements even though there is some order property for the statuses (bluetooth, donotdisturb, lock). For instance I wanted a mobile looking lock over other elements, but it doesn't work over the time element(hours, minutes, seconds).

• Animations they look nice but may slow down the watch face, and in palette mode the animation is super sped up. I don't know if the number of images you use in animation represent the length of the animation or if there i sany other property in the json file responsible for that. The "animation speed" property didn't do anything for me when making a pendulum animation.

• Tilted/Angled numbers are possible to do but they're basically done in one big row that is shifting from left to right. This means the file size gets big fast so it depends on the font and the angle you want the font to be at, whether you can make the watchface work.

• Weather don't make a watchface with it because it's not working. If/When they implement it we still need to get the correct number and order of the icons (there's like 30 of them last I checked).

• Analog clock can be done fairly simply. The issue I had was with the clock hands, they're not icons but rather a shape you make out of a few point. I didn't test how many points is too much, I had around 30 and the hands wouldn't show up in the Mi Band, keepeng the number under 15 seemed to work. Although in my opinion the hands don't look nice as if they could by using an image an just rotating it around.

• Seconds should only be used if you don't have any activites (steps, pulse, distance, calories) because the data gets hidden after 1 second of the watch face being displayed.

• Triggers are by far most interesting to me. What do I mean by triggers - anything that can change the watch face so it makes it more dynamic. Depending on your design you can use
  • Bluetooth, DoNotDisturb, Lock
  • The tens of hours (0,1,2) for 3 triggers, you could also use tens in minutes and seconds( 0 to 5) for 6 triggers
  • Steps counter you can make some cool animations not just the standard bar filling up
  • Battery - if used for animation it will be slow, unless you have a bright background to drain the battery fast

Feel free to add your observations and what you would like to see be possible to do in the future. I saw this one watchface (forgot for which watch) that had the time continuously spin around but for that we would need animations or at the very least be able to overlay the time element.

[Jackall Digital]

I stumbled upon a property that not a lot of watch face authors know about and I feel it's pretty usefull and can also serve as a trigger.

Code: Select all

"StepsProgress": {
  "GoalImage": {
    "X": 53,
    "Y": 132,
    "ImageIndex": 1000
  }
}

The good thing about this piece of code is that you don't have to implement any steps and the image will still display when you reach the daily steps goal (by default this is set to 8000 in the mifit app)

[Dgkgn]

Thanks for informing..

I m wondering if there is a way to show notification count at watch face? Not necessarily the exact count, just a sign is enough if there are any unread notification.

[vaidotas]

A few years have passed since the last post.
Has anyone found a way to show an icon on the watchface when there are unread messages?