Testing Watch Faces in Remote Test Lab through Watch Face Studio
Mobassir Ahsan
Engineer, Samsung Developer Program
Custom watch faces are a popular way for users to customize their smartwatches. Watch Face Studio (WFS) is a universal GUI tool that allows you to design watch faces for Wear OS devices. It supports various Samsung Galaxy Watch features, such as styles, tags, sensors, and complications.
Although you can preview your watch face design and many of its features on the emulator included in WFS, some visuals and behavior can be different on a physical device. To ensure your watch face functions correctly on all the latest Galaxy Watches, Remote Test Lab (RTL) enables you to test your applications on actual Samsung Galaxy devices without having physical access to them.
Advantages of testing your watch face in RTL include convenience and cost savings from having access to a range of Galaxy Watches without having to own them yourself, and the ability to test features that are not supported by the WFS emulator, such as watch face complications and launching applications from them.
This article uses a sample watch face with some simple complications to demonstrate how you can make use of RTL to test a watch face created in WFS. The basic steps are to reserve and connect to an RTL device, link it to your computer through Remote Debug Bridge (RDB), and then deploy the watch face to the device from within WFS.
Reserve a Galaxy Watch on Remote Test Lab
Because RTL is a virtual credit-based time-limited service, to take full advantage of your credits and allotted time, make sure your project is ready to test before connecting to RTL.
To reserve and connect to a remote device on RTL:
- Sign in to the Samsung Developers website.
- In the “Support” menu, select “Remote Test Lab.”
- To view the device list, click “Get Started.”
The device list shows all the available devices on RTL. To list the smartwatches only, select “Galaxy Watch” from the side menu.
Figure 2: Available watches on RTL - Select the device you want to test the watch face on.
Select the physical location of the device you want to use and define the duration you want to reserve it for.
Figure 3: RTL device location and duration selection
NoteReserving RTL devices consumes virtual credits. The cost depends on the duration of your reservation. The number of credits available on your Samsung account is shown at the top right of the screen. To earn 10 credits once per day, click the “My Credits” text.- When you are ready, click “Start.” The device launches in a new window.
Connect the computer to the remote device
Use the Remote Debug Bridge (RDB) tool to connect the RTL remote device to your computer:
- From the sidebar of the RTL device window, select “Remote Debug Bridge” and click “Connect.”
Click “Download” to download the RDB tool and “OK” to close the dialog.
Figure 4: RDB download in RTL Extract the content of the downloaded file to a folder. Run the “rdb.exe” application. A terminal window opens and listens for the RDB connection from the RTL server.
Figure 5: Launching RDB Return to the RTL window, select “Remote Debug Bridge,” and click “Connect” again. A connection is established between your computer and the RTL device.
Figure 6: ADB connected to remote device through RDB
The remote device is now connected to your computer. It responds to Android Debug Bridge (ADB) commands, such as “adb devices,” in the same way as if you had connected to a physical device in your possession.
For more information on connecting your computer to devices on RTL, see Connect to Devices on Remote Test Lab Using RDB in Android Studio.
To ensure ADB commands work correctly, you must have ADB already installed and added to your path environment variable. ADB is included with your WFS installation.
To add ADB to the “Path” environment variable on a Windows computer:
- Navigate to “Start > Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables.”
- In the “User variables” section, select “Path” and click “Edit.”
- To add a new entry to the list, select “New.”
- Enter the path to the “\tools\window” subfolder of your WFS installation folder, for example, “C:\Program Files\WatchFaceStudio\tools\window.”
- Click “OK” and close the dialog.
- Relaunch your terminal window.
- Open a terminal window.
- Enter the following command: “export PATH=$PATH:/Applications/WatchFaceStudio.app/Contents/tools/mac.” If your installation of WFS has a different location or application name, modify the command accordingly.
- Relaunch your terminal window.
Deploy the watch face
To deploy a watch face from WFS to the RTL device:
- In WFS, open the watch face project.
Click “Run on Device” at the top right of the screen. The “Connected Devices” window appears, listing the available devices.
Figure 7: Remote device in “Connected Devices” list - To deploy the watch face to the remote device, select the device from the list.
Deployment is complete when the “Launch Complete” dialog appears in WFS. Your watch face is launched on the remote device.
If the watch face does not launch on the remote device automatically, select it on the watch:
- To open the watch face menu, press and hold on the watch face home screen.
- Swipe right until you reach the “Add Watch Face” screen or a “+” button.
- Tap the “+” button.
- To find the watch face that you deployed, scroll to the end of the watch face list.
- To select the watch face, tap the image of the watch face or the “Download” button.
Test the watch face
Now you are ready to test the watch face on the RTL device. The following steps demonstrate testing watch face complications.
To add a complication to the watch face:
- To open the watch face menu, press and hold on the watch face.
- Select “Customize.” The “Styles” screen opens.
- Scroll to the “Complications” screen, which shows the available complication slots on the watch face.
Select a complication slot and confirm allowing the watch face to access watch data.
Figure 10: Customizing complications Select the complication you want to add to the watch face. In the following figure, the “Chance of Rain” and “Battery” complications have been added.
Figure 11: Custom complication on watch faces Test the watch face in the same way as on a real device. For example, tapping a complication launches the appropriate application. When the battery widget is tapped, the Battery application launches on the watch. The WFS emulator does not support this feature, showing only that the “‘Complication Slot’ is opened.”
Because the RTL device is a real device, you can observe the actual watch face behavior in real time.
Figure 12: Custom complications on WFS emulator and on RTL device - When testing is complete, disconnect RDB by selecting “Disconnect” from the “Remote Debug Bridge” menu and close the RTL window to end the RTL session.
Summary
To comprehensively test your watch face, you can easily connect your computer to Remote Test Lab devices and deploy the watch face to it through Watch Face Studio. RTL allows you to test on a wide range of Samsung Galaxy Watches without having physical access to them. Because the RTL devices are real devices, you can also test watch face features that are not supported by the emulator.
If you have questions or need help with the steps presented in this article, you can share your queries on the Samsung Developers Forum. You can also contact us directly for more specialized support through the Samsung Developer Support Portal.
Additional Resources
To learn more about Watch Face Studio, watch face complications, and Remote Test Lab, check out the following links:
