Complications on native watch-faces?

On some devices, native complications work with native watch faces. Do you mean complications published in CIQ being available on native watch faces?

jim_m_58 said:

On some devices, native complications work with native watch faces.

They may not have called them "complications" but the notion of adding native data/info to native watch faces has been around since the 2015 when the Fenix 3 came out; they just called it "data" (or something similar) in the watch face config menu.

jim_m_58 said:

Do you mean complications published in CIQ being available on native watch faces?

Yes, that is what I am talking about.

They are more than just having data fields like on the f3.  With complications, let's say you are showing steps.  If you press on steps in the watch face, it launches the steps glance. If you have a CIQ WF that handles complications published in CIQ, pressing that area of the screen launches that CIQ glance.  Press is only available on devices with touch.

I kind of doubt that native watch faces will be able to use CIQ published complications in the near future

jim_m_58 said:

They are more than just having data fields like on the f3.

No, at the most basic level, they are not. And to a regular user, they are not. Data is being displayed and how that is accomplished behind the scene in the code is irrelevant to almost everyone.

jim_m_58 said:

With complications, let's say you are showing steps.  If you press on steps in the watch face, it launches the steps glance.

I'm aware of that functionality but I'm pretty sure my Epix 2 had that ability before the Complications API was announced, and regardless, sending a user to an app on long press is more of a UI/UX thing versus the core functionality of publishing and subscribing to data streams/feeds.

jim_m_58 said:

I kind of doubt that native watch faces will be able to use CIQ published complications in the near future

I'm not interested in thoughts; I am looking for factual information from either Garmin directly or from someone who has heard (or heard hints of) one way or the other from Garmin.

For the record, and not that it matters since only Garmin controls what Garmin does, my thought is the opposite. I don't see why native watch faces wouldn't support CIQ complications. If users want the speed, look, smoothness, etc of a native watch face but want a couple extra points of data supplied by 3rd parties, why not support it? They already support 3rd party data during native activities (via data fields).

Have you watched the video from the GDVC last October?

jim_m_58 said:

Have you watched the video from the GDVC last October?

I saw it live and yes, I re-watched it before I posted this to remind myself if the presenter mentioned anything about native watch faces using CIQ Complications; they did not. The only mention of anything native was that CIQ watch faces will be able to bring up native widgets/glances on long press.

I also dug out my original Epix 2 box from June 2022 and on page one in the Device Overview section, when referencing the main screen, it says: "Hold the watch face data to open the glance or feature" -- so I was correct in my statement that touching data to open the glance was available long before it was mentioned as part of the Complictions API during GDVC 2022.

Yes, complication in CIQ was part of System 6 (the 4.2.x API Level) where the Beta SDK, 4.2.0 was released at the same time as the GDVC.  Native watch faces had them before that. The only place CIQ published complications show in anything native is in glance folders, See "glancePreview="true"> in the xml for publishing.  Right now, there is no way to define what is published by CIQ, what that data is, or the data format for a native WF to use.  Even in the CIQ API, CIQ published complications are "COMPLICATION_TYPE_INVALID" so even for CIQ WF's, they are a bit hidden.

jim_m_58 said:

Native watch faces had them before that.

Yes, in 2015 native watch faces had them (in a different format).

But all of this is IRRELEVANT to my original question: Has anyone heard from Garmin as to whether or not Connect IQ (ie. third-party, from the Garmin App Store) complications will (eventually) work on native (built-in watch faces)? And if so, do we have a timeframe?

it's definitely possible, but I think it's unlikely Robert as native watch faces do not load the connect iq virtual machine.

peterdedecker said:

native watch faces do not load the connect iq virtual machine

That may be but if a widget/glance runs a background process (which 9 times out of 10 will happen while the watch face is displayed) it can call Complications.updateComplication(), which would be easy for the native watch face to subscribe to.