Google’s new API may improve Android Wear Complications

Google announced today a new version of its Complications API for developers in order to help them create better experiences for Android Wear. Complications are dynamic data sets which appear on watch faces, such as step counts, notifications, weather alerts, and similar.

Specifically, the refreshed API can now auto-size text to fit in bounds defined by watch face makers and it includes a full rendering tool to handle style and layout factors for complications.

The API adds more sample code that developers can cut-and-paste into their apps, as well as a new test suite for checking that watch faces can handle all the fields and complications together.

The new Complications API is for Android Wear 2.0 and up. Google released the second-generation wearable platform earlier this year. Google also said it is offering developers a new Wear UI library for handling user interfaces. Notably, Google is killing off the card pattern and multi-directional UIs for Android Wear devices. This change will occur over time.