Installation / Troubleshooting

Using the Play Store website on your laptop or desktop computer

Installing watch faces is not as trivial as it sounds. When clicking the install button on the Play Store website, you will have to select the correct device first from a dropdown first.

Installing watch face from a desktop browser

Using the Google Play app on your phone

On the phone, the Play Store app can be even more frustrating. Depending on if a watch face has a phone companion app or not, there might not be results visible until you switch from “This device” to “Watch”.

To make sure that you install the watch face on the watch, click on the little triangle on the right side of the Install button and tick the checkbox in front of your watch device before clicking Install.

If your watch device is not available from the dropdown, open the Play Store in a browser instead of using the app.

Did everything right and the watch face is still missing?

This is a common issue, although it’s becoming rare since the Wear OS 4 update. Here’s the situation: you browse the Play Store from your watch and find a watch face you want to download. You tap Install, and nothing happens or you may get a Download Pending message.

Nobody is sure why this happens, but it’s easy to fix. First, turn your watch’s Wi-Fi off and on again. If that doesn’t work, go to the Wear OS app on your phone and resync the apps. Either of those measures should fix it, but your best bet is to upgrade to Wear OS 4.