Must Have Apps For Wear 3.0 and Later

[mountainbikermark]

The stock messaging app on a Samsung device is pretty vanilla but what it does do it does Apple-like in its quality and accuracy .
Apple still totally dominates the wearable market but that's another topic for another day .
With the latest update to the Galaxy Watches the messaging app got some refinements and polishes .
I have the LTE model of the Galaxy Watch 4 because I am away from my phone AND Wi-Fi often during the work day but still need to use my messaging app for work purposes between co-workers , superiors , and myself .
With decent , or better , signal strength (I'm on T-Mobile) the stock messaging app is about as snappy as any phone texting app and can do many things the phone version can do .
I put screen shots of a conversation my oldest daughter and I were having about mens shirts . She sent me a link , on my watch I opened it , found what I was talking about using the watch browser , screenshotted it , sent it to her , and then we talked about how I wanted it decorated to match one she'd made before for me on her Cricut .
Since I'm used to using my watch like a pda and the lack of sluggishness that used to plague this app over LTE we had that conversation in only a few minutes , including me ordering the shirts and sending them to her house in Kentucky (I live in Virginia ) as if it was done on my Note10+ .
The phone version is pretty vanilla , as I said , but one thing I've always liked is the ability to set up a custom wallpaper as a background vs just colors or some weird shapes .

Darth Mode 10+

 

[bkdodger]

Excellent write up and appreciate it for all to see on here using watches

 

[mountainbikermark]

Excellent write up and appreciate it for all to see on here using watches

I have a teen account set up on Amazon for my youngest .
Yesterday she texted asking if she could buy something . I said yes . I get a notification text , including link , that she had ordered something but it was over her arranged limit so I'd have to approve it and it contained a link to do so . I tapped it , browser on watch opens to address , I tap ok , close out and go back to work . Get a text stating I'd approved the purchase then a thank you text from my daughter .
This was all on my watch while away from my phone and Wi-Fi but using LTE network and never missed a beat with the order I was stacking .
My daughter started swim team last night and her new swim goggles arrived before she had to be there .
Samsung sure has come a long way since my Gear S 1

Darth Mode 10+

 

[bkdodger]

I have a teen account set up on Amazon for my youngest .
Yesterday she texted asking if she could buy something . I said yes . I get a notification text , including link , that she had ordered something but it was over her arranged limit so I'd have to approve it and it contained a link to do so . I tapped it , browser on watch opens to address , I tap ok , close out and go back to work . Get a text stating I'd approved the purchase then a thank you text from my daughter .
This was all on my watch while away from my phone and Wi-Fi but using LTE network and never missed a beat with the order I was stacking .
My daughter started swim team last night and her new swim goggles arrived before she had to be there .
Samsung sure has come a long way since my Gear S 1

Darth Mode 10+

That's awesome interaction and ease of use ... Sammy has definitely come a long way all around including phones and UI ..they are my favorite right now ..

And happy to see ya keeping the daughter happy and she's active swimming

 

[mountainbikermark]

That's awesome interaction and ease of use ... Sammy has definitely come a long way all around including phones and UI ..they are my favorite right now ..

And happy to see ya keeping the daughter happy and she's active swimming

She has gone from varsity field hockey to junior varsity soccer to the swim team .
When I was a freshman about the most scholastic thing I did was get suspended for setting off tear gas bombs in a bathroom .
I was right popular after that one because they had to evacuate the school and everyone got the afternoon off .

Darth Mode 10+

 

[bkdodger]

She has gone from varsity field hockey to junior varsity soccer to the swim team .
When I was a freshman about the most scholastic thing I did was get suspended for setting off tear gas bombs in a bathroom .
I was right popular after that one because they had to evacuate the school and everyone got the afternoon off .

Darth Mode 10+

Lmao that's my journey though I was good in sports but hanging out hurt my chances...like that she's focused

 

[mountainbikermark]

So you want to make use of the noises your watch can make , aka ringtone and notification sounds but not using the ones Samsung embedded .
This one works with or without the phone companion app. As the screenshots show , I've changed my ringtone and notification from stock to ones I made years ago when I had a flip phone and BITPIM was THE way to get around locked file systems on the phone .
Anyway , find the one you want , share to wear music and it'll be there. Open the file manager and scroll down to music . Tap it and you'll find your files there . Long press the one you want and tap the 3 dots to the left of the screen . Choose copy . Tap the arrow facing left at the top of the screen to go back a screen or 2 (depending on how deep you went into your music folder ) then scroll down to ringtone or notification folder tap it then tap the check mark on the lower right screen . It'll be where you want it. Restart your PHONE . For some reason it won't show up unless you restart your phone . Let them talk to each other for a few minutes then go to settings , sounds , then the option you want to change . I don't know why I had to wait a few minutes after everything reconnected but when I did so everything worked as planned but before I did that it was showing the name but playing the wrong sounds .
This little file explorer can do more than just that but that's the only thing I've really dug into so far . I used to use the Tizen version on my Gear 1 to import PDFs. as well as music and ringtones .
Hope you enjoy this cool and free app .
View attachment 89851View attachment 89852View attachment 89853

Darth Mode 10+
Edit. By accident I found a MUCH simpler way to get the new stuff going . Instead of a reboot force stop the Wear app on your phone and force stop the file manager app and settings app on your watch .

Samsung did us a favor by breaking the use of this app with an update to their firmware but totally by accident I found a work around .
Same app top download media to the watch but have the watch open open to sounds/notifications while having Wear app open to sounds/notifications . The downloaded media will not show up perse BUUUUT it changes the stock tone sounds (but not name of them ) to the downloaded media . You gotta tap them all to hear what you want but while you're sampling the stock tone the one you downloaded is playing on the watch . Once you find the one you want , no reboot needed .
If you change the notifications and ringtones setting to vibrate or silent the tones you set to away when you change it back to sound . Now that I've exposed the work around count on Google or Samsung to "fix" that one too .

Darth Mode 10+

 

[mountainbikermark]

So you want to make use of the noises your watch can make , aka ringtone and notification sounds but not using the ones Samsung embedded .
This one works with or without the phone companion app. As the screenshots show , I've changed my ringtone and notification from stock to ones I made years ago when I had a flip phone and BITPIM was THE way to get around locked file systems on the phone .
Anyway , find the one you want , share to wear music and it'll be there. Open the file manager and scroll down to music . Tap it and you'll find your files there . Long press the one you want and tap the 3 dots to the left of the screen . Choose copy . Tap the arrow facing left at the top of the screen to go back a screen or 2 (depending on how deep you went into your music folder ) then scroll down to ringtone or notification folder tap it then tap the check mark on the lower right screen . It'll be where you want it. Restart your PHONE . For some reason it won't show up unless you restart your phone . Let them talk to each other for a few minutes then go to settings , sounds , then the option you want to change . I don't know why I had to wait a few minutes after everything reconnected but when I did so everything worked as planned but before I did that it was showing the name but playing the wrong sounds .
This little file explorer can do more than just that but that's the only thing I've really dug into so far . I used to use the Tizen version on my Gear 1 to import PDFs. as well as music and ringtones .
Hope you enjoy this cool and free app .
View attachment 89851View attachment 89852View attachment 89853

Darth Mode 10+
Edit. By accident I found a MUCH simpler way to get the new stuff going . Instead of a reboot force stop the Wear app on your phone and force stop the file manager app and settings app on your watch .

After the last update this app wasn't working anymore BUT its developers didn't just give up and call it done .

I've gotten 2 updates recently on both the phone and watch itself and it is now working again
You add the media as before , power down the watch , power out back up and the media is there . No more work arounds , accidental show up under a stock name , etc . It's where you dropped it and it works perfectly .
I made a couple of ringtones from Caddyshack , the car horn and the boat horn , that work great . The ringtone from the original phone Harry Bosch used in the show Bosch is my ringtone for the watch and the boat horn is my current notification .
Tapatalk Cloud - Downlaoad File Caddyshack%20-%20Funny%20Boat%20Scene_256k.mp3

Darth Mode 10+

 

[mountainbikermark]

The forum let me share the boat ringtone but not the car horn .

 

[bkdodger]

The forum let me share the boat ringtone but not the car horn .

Hmmm weird ....maybe using Google photos

 

[mountainbikermark]

Hmmm weird ....maybe using Google photos

If says it doesn't support mp3 . But they're all mp3 .
If anyone is interested I could link them to my Dropbox though .

Darth Mode 10+

 

[mountainbikermark]

My Wear File Explorer is doing a good job of allowing us to add custom tones and notifications but Samsung , with every update , takes away our ability to actually use those tones and notifications .
I wonder if they'll finally allow use of them with the next major update .
For now I was able to make use of my homemade "wart hog strafe" sound as a notification but won't allow the full version as a ringtone that I would have preferred

Darth Mode 10+

 

[mountainbikermark]

Here's one I forgot I had even though I use it regularly .
Thermo Check. It isn't getting great reviews on the phone part but I can attest to how neat it is on my GW 6 . It doesn't work on any models that don't have a temperature sensor but I believe that got added as a standard feature from the 5 forward .
Anyway if you want to measure the air temp , water temp , temp of that metal object that's been sitting in the sun , or countless other things this app and a Galaxy Watch are going to help you out .
It's pretty simple and if you're not good at converting Celsius to Fahrenheit Google Assistant is just an ask away .

It's free btw with no ads on the watch but has ads if you use it on your phone as well . It is standalone if you , like me , prefer it that way.

Darth Mode 10+

 

[mountainbikermark]

Phone Battery Complication .
Not just for your phone but for your Galaxy Watch with Wear 4.0 or later .
Battery friendly .
I got it to show me my battery temperature and not charge left. It's also on my GW6 since it seems more prone to overheating them the 7U has been .
There's some experimental features that require a companion app on the phone and it'll let you get real time battery level on the phone and mirror phone notifications .
The complication looks nice and is informative but doesn't do anything when tapped .

Darth Mode 10+

 

[mountainbikermark]

Audible by Amazon.
Just like whisper sync between Kindle devices the Audible app can sync between the phone and the watch .
On the watch it'll only work with a Bluetooth setup so it's a battery hog running the CPU and Bluetooth radio at the same time . It is a standalone capable app .
On the Ultra I can get about 15 hours of just this before I get an alert to go into power saving mode . That might not sound like a lot but it is much better than my previous devices . I get about the same battery life using the built in music player and Bluetooth earbuds .
Anyway , Amazon is often running specials on different books and discounts on memberships . Right now though I've had an account with Audible since before smartwatches graced the US shores but I got an offer to re-up for . 99 a month for 3 months and get 1 free audio book every month during that trial . After 3 months I'll cancel until the next discount offer . I can still buy books when they go on sale (like most Star Trek books go on sale here and there for under $5 ).
With the 7Ultra being LTE I listen to Audible when I'm out walking and leave my phone at home. Between LTE, GPS, Bluetooth and app running I take a big hit on battery but that's why I got this new watch .
The app is free but there's a monthly membership if you want to keep buying new books . Once you buy a book it's yours to listen to as often as you want .

Darth Mode 10+