Publish from Watch Face Designer to Google Play

This guide explains how to publish your watch face, created using Watch Face Designer, to Google Play.

Sign into your developer account in Google Play

Sign in to Google Play Console and press 'Create App' on the dashboard.

During the "create app," workflow, turn off automatic protection when prompted; otherwise, you'll have issues signing the bundle later. Automatic protection isn't relevant to watch faces because they don't have any code.

Figure 1: The Create app screen in the Play Console

Add support for the Wear OS form factor

After you've created your app, navigate to Test and release > Testing > Internal testing:

Figure 2: The Test and release screen in the Play Console

In the drop-down in the top right of the page, select Manage form factors, and add Wear OS as a form factor for your app:

Manage form factors is the 2nd option in the menu
Figure 3: Selecting the Manage form factors option (left), then adding Wear OS on the Form factors tab on the Advanced settings screen (right)

Create a release on the internal testing track

Return to the internal testing menu and create a Wear OS-only internal testing track. Then, create a release:

Button appears near the top-right corner of the screen Button also appears near the top-right corner of the screen
Figure 4: Select the Create track button (left), then on the next screen, select the Create new release button (right).

On the Create closed testing release screen, select Choose signing key.

Button is in the 'App Bundles' section on the screen Button is on the right
Figure 5: Select the Choose signing key button (left), then in the dialog that appears, select Use Google-generated key (right).

Drag-and-drop the AAB file from Watch Face Designer into the Upload section, and proceed with creating the release on the testing track.

Next steps

From here, follow official Google Play documentation on trying out apps in the testing track and promoting releases to production, which makes your app visible to everyone on Google Play.