Wear OS helps users stay connected, achieve their health and fitness goals, and express their personal style.
As an Android developer, you're on familiar ground. Wear OS embraces the best practices of Modern Android Development, allowing you to apply your knowledge of its core libraries, principles, and techniques. For example, when it comes to building your user interface, we recommend Compose for Wear OS. As a cornerstone of the modern toolkit, it helps you write beautiful, efficient apps with less code.
Whether you want to start with high-level design concepts or jump straight into building your first app, these guides will set you on the right path.
Get started
- Design your Wear OS user interface ⍈: The design hub for Wear OS, covering foundations, components, and best practices.
- Principles of Wear OS development: Principles behind high-quality Wear OS apps, like designing for glanceability and offline use.
- Wear OS pathway: A guided learning path with tutorials and codelabs to build your skills sequentially.
- Wear OS user interfaces: An overview of Wear OS UI surfaces (apps, tiles, complications) and when to use each one.
- Use Jetpack Compose on Wear OS: A guide to setting up your project and building UIs with Compose for Wear OS, our recommended toolkit.
- Create and run a wearable app: A step-by-step tutorial for creating and running your first app on an emulator or physical device.
- Debug a Wear OS app: Instructions for connecting a physical watch to your computer for debugging over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or USB.
- Wear OS app quality: The official checklist of quality guidelines for publishing a Wear OS app on Google Play.
Design
- Design principles: Core UX principles for designing apps that are glanceable and optimized for the wrist.
- Get started: An overview of surfaces, key moments, and essential patterns to start your design process.
- Figma design kit: The official Figma design kit with components, styles, and templates for creating mockups.
Additional resources
- Compose for Wear OS codelab.
- Create your first Tile in Wear OS codelab.
- Distribute to Wear OS.
- Wear OS release notes.