Is ACTIVITY available to a WatchFace?

According to the docs the ACTIVITY stuff is not available to a watchface. However I can get altitude info...

value = ActI.getActivityInfo().altitude.toFloat();

This gets a sensible value in my watch face. But according to the Programmers Guide the ActivityInfo is not available to a watchface.

Erm!?

jim_m_58 over 7 years ago

I'm not sure which doc you saw this in (it's really what was intended), but it's kind of a well known "secret" that things in Activity.Info might be valid. You need to be careful with it in that it's not be consistent on all watches and may go away at some point. Other things in Activity.Info that are commonly used are things like currentLocation (for sunrise/sunset calculations) and currentHeartRate, for heart rate. BUT, altitude will only change on baro devices, currentLocation will go stale after some period of time, and currentHeartRate only changes if the watch has WHR.

With the ability to do 1hz/"always active"/"seconds all the time" watch faces I think are a fair number of folks now using currentHeartRate, so the HR on a watchface are close to real time. Between that and the others I mentioned in Activity.Info, I feel it's safe to use them (with care!) at least for a while. The f5x a while back, didn't have data in the things I mentioned, and last I checked, still didn't have access to currentHeartRate, as an example if "be careful".