CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wear-osandroid-wear-2.0
AsafK
AsafK

Reputation: 2485

Publishing a Wear app to the play store

I'm not clear about the process of publishing an android Wear application as a separate apk. My wear app is mobile dependent and supports both wear 1.0 and 2.0. I followed Google instructions of publishing the wear app as an embedded apk inside the mobile apk and everything works fine. But is it possible to publish the wear apk independently (again, as a mobile dependent app) to the wear store ?

Appreciate the help.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1516

Answers (1)

Mr.Rebot
Mr.Rebot

Reputation: 6791

Based on the documentation - Identifying an app as standalone:

Wear 2.0 requires a meta-data element in the Android Manifest file of watch apps, as a child of the <application> element. The name of the meta-data element is com.google.android.wearable.standalone and the value must be true or false. The element indicates whether your watch app is a standalone app and thus doesn't require a phone-side Android app to operate. If the setting for the element is true, your app can be made available in the Play Store on watches paired to iPhones, as long as your active APKs in all channels (e.g., in the beta channel) have the element set to true. If not all of your APKs (alpha, beta, and production) that currently are served to users have the above setting, your app will be unavailable when a user searches on a watch paired to an iPhone.

A watch app may or may not be considered standalone. A watch app can be categorized as one of the following:

  • Completely independent of a phone app
  • Semi-independent (a phone app is not required and would provide only optional features)
  • Dependent on a phone app

If a watch app is completely independent or semi-independent, set the value of the new meta-data element to true:

<application>
...
  <meta-data
    android:name="com.google.android.wearable.standalone"
    android:value="true" />
...
</application>

For more information here are some links:

Hope this helps.

Upvotes: 2

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