Watchfaces for all the available complications

Ondrej 23 days ago

I’m exploring how Garmin devices handle the concept of Complications. My initial understanding was that a watch face could potentially subscribe to all the complications available on a device (even those the watch face developer hasn’t explicitly anticipated), so the watch face could display a wide variety of custom data.

Is there a mechanism that allows a watch face to subscribe to any available complication on the device? Have any watch faces implemented this kind of “universal” subscription, where they automatically discover and display new complications without the watch face author coding for each one?

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FlowState 23 days ago in reply to jim_m_58 +2

jim_m_58 said:
And finding those published by CIQ are a bit different, as you look for COMPLICATION_TYPE_INVALD and then display the short or long name if you want the user to pick

It doesn't *have* to…
FlowState 23 days ago +1

Your app can iterate through all complications using Complications.getComplications(), to provide the user with a list to select from. Your watchface would still have to subscribe to individual complications…
Ondrej 23 days ago +1

I wanted to ask—are there already watch faces available that support unknown or custom complications out of the box?

I specifically don't want to create or modify a watch face every time an interesting…

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0 FlowState 22 days ago in reply to Ondrej

Ondrej said:
Do you know about any other?

I don't know of any off the top of my head, but it seems that with the new support for the native on-device watchface editor in CIQ (only for Fenix 8 watches and newer), it will be very easy for your watchface to have a field which allows the user to select any available complication.

https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/core-topics/editing-watch-faces-on-device/

In the above example, it seems that the complication field - with id 3 and the allowAny attribute set to true - will be able to accept all complications available on the watch.

Here's the full list of supported devices:

[https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/api-docs/Toybox/Application/WatchFaceConfig.html]

Enduro 3
fēnix® 8 43mm
fēnix® 8 47mm / 51mm / tactix® 8 47mm / 51mm
fēnix® 8 Solar 47mm
fēnix® 8 Solar 51mm / tactix® 8 Solar 51mm
fēnix® E

0 FlowState 14 days ago in reply to FlowState

TL;DR allowing user to select a native complication by typing in a string corresponding to its longLabel (for example) is problematic because longLabel is translated.

The same problem would exist - to a lesser extent - for 3rd party complications.

I should walk back something I said earlier in the thread. It wouldn't be the best idea to allow users to select a *native* complication by typing in its shortLabel/longLabel (or by saving shortLabel/longLabel after the user selects a native complication from a list).

The problem with that is shortLabel and longLabel are translated by Garmin, so they could be different depending on the user's device language.

e.g.

COMPLICATION_TYPE_HEART_RATE:

- English: "Heart Rate" / "HR" (longLabel/shortLabel)

- French: "Fréquence cardiaque" / "FC"

COMPLICATION_TYPE_BODY_BATTERY (I think this is an exception to the rule)

- English: "Body Battery" / "BODY"

- French: "Body Battery" / "BODY"

So even if you know the English name for the complication, you may not know the name for your device's language. And if you change your device's language, it would break any saved setting which had a complication's longLabel or shortLabel as a string.

The same issue applies to 3rd party complications, although the difference is that some (or all?) 3rd party complications may only use English for the labels. If any 3rd party complication translates longLabel, then clearly it would be more difficult to refer to the complication by longLabel (unless the dev or publishing app tells you the longLabel for your device's language).

Clearly Garmin intends devs to persist the complication ID for settings, but that could never work in "off-device" settings (settings which are modified in Connect IQ or Garmin Express.)

Another way to allow users to select an arbitrary native complication in off-device settings could be to let them type in the integer type (either as a number or a string). e.g. COMPLICATION_TYPE_HEART_RATE = 18. Obviously this would not be very user friendly, but it might be a nice option for advanced users.