Wear OS modification for better battery life

Performance Boost

This first modification is actually the easiest and can be done on the watch itself without any extra tools, debuggers, etc.

1. Enable developer settings on your watch
   1. Open the watch’s Settings.
   2. Tap System > About.
   3. Scroll to Build number and tap the build number seven times.
   4. A dialog will appear confirming that you are now a developer.
2. Swipe back to the main settings menu and scroll to the bottom and select “Developer Options”
   1. There’s a whole lot of really nice options you can tweak in here. I recommend that you do not…unless you really understand what you are doing
3. Scroll down to Transition Animation Scale
   1. Change it to Animation Off
   2. Swipe back
4. Scroll down to Animator Duration Scale
   1. Change it to Animation Off
   2. Swipe back to main watch face

Remove Bloatware

The second modification is going to be a bit more involved, but well worth it.

• Hardware Requirements: Watch, Paired Android Phone, Computer, USB Cable
• Software Requirements: Linux OS, Android Debug Bridge (ADB)

Enable Developer Mode & Debugging on Watch/Phone over Bluetooth

Google made it very clear how to do enable debugging and developer options and it would be a waste of my time and yours to copy and paste all of it: https://developer.android.com/training/wearables/apps/debugging

Follow the instructions in the Debug Over Bluetooth section to…

• Enable developer options on your watch
• Enable developer options on your phone
• Enable USB Debugging on the phone
• Enable ADB/Bluetooth debugging on the watch
• Enable Bluetooth Debugging on the phone
• Connect the debugger to the watch
  • Don’t be confused by the step earlier when you started the ADB server. On mine it was running on port 5037. That is fine. Starting the service informs you just what port ADB is running on. Continue with the adb forwarding steps because we are going to use port 4444 as a TCP to Bluetooth port forwarding service to the watch.
  • Go ahead and confirm debugging request on your watch and on your phone

$ adb forward tcp:4444 localabstract:/adb-hub
$ adb connect 127.0.0.1:4444

Now even though debug over WiFi is an option, I don’t recommend doing it. Chicken and the egg problem. You don’t have full control of the watch yet, so it’s going to manage the radios for battery performance however it so damn well pleases. If you connect over WiFi, it may decide it wants to turn WiFi off and only use BT. That could be really annoying. Lets avoid that and just debug “through” the phone and over the BT radio instead since it will always maintain that interface between the phone and watch. So we are trading off an easier setup for interface reliability.

If you did everything as the steps told you, your Wear OS companion app will now show…

Host: connected
Target: connected

Uninstall Bloatware Without Having Root Privleges

First things first, I’m not a big fan of YOLO. Do recon on your watch first, google the packages to ensure they are truely something you want to get rid of. So lets start by getting a list of those packages, however I want them sorted out by which are enabled (-e flag) and disabled (-d flag) and output them to a file. If you are curious about the different filtering options go here and CTRL-F “list packages”

hax0r@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ adb -s 127.0.0.1:4444 shell pm list packages -e > enabled_packages.txt
hax0r@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ adb -s 127.0.0.1:4444 shell pm list packages -d > disabled_packages.txt

I literally just finished doing this and was coming here to post what I did.

I was pretty underwhelmed with the watch after a day of playing with it and was ready to give up on it. But after these steps the thing that was lagging the most by far (Google Assistant) is now pretty darn snappy.

A few things I’d add though:

– My disabled list was a bit different from the hackaday guy, so I kept a few on just to be on the safe side. Below in quotes is the list of what I disabled and kept with a bonus (command copied in front) so just copy / paste 1 by 1.

adb -s 127.0.0.1:4444 shell

DISABLED
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.dianping.v1
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.sogou.map.android.maps
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.sdu.didi.psnger
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.mobvoi.wear.fitness.aw
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.mobvoi.ticwear.sidewearvoicesearch
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.mobvoi.wear.social.aw
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.mobvoi.wear.account.aw
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.fossil.wearables.ds
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.fossil.wearables.ks
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.fossil.wearables.mk
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.fossil.wearables.ms
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.fossil.wearables.pu
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.mobvoi.wear.appsservice
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.mobvoi.wear.health.aw
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.mobvoi.wear.neteasemusic.aw
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.google.android.inputmethod.pinyin
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.mobvoi.ticwear.aw.appstore
pm uninstall -k –user 0 ctrip.android.view
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.gotokeep.androidwear
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.amberweather.watch
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.eg.android.AlipayGphoneKEPT
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.google.android.wearable.smarthome
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.google.android.clockwork.remindersle
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.google.android.clockwork.hotwordle
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.google.android.wearable.reminders
pm uninstall -k –user 0 com.android.providers.blockednumber

exit

C:\adb>adb -s 127.0.0.1:4444 shell pm list packages -d
package:com.google.android.wearable.smarthome
package:com.google.android.clockwork.remindersle
package:com.google.android.clockwork.hotwordle
package:com.google.android.wearable.reminders

 

– After that I also went into Settings > App & Notifications > App Info > System Apps and disabled the following from there also:

com.fossil.charge.darter (Charging screen)
Diesel
E-Label (App to display regulatory info https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta … l&hl=en_CA)
Keep (Google Keep to takes notes)
Misfit
MK Access
Mobvoi account
Puma Apps
Sogou Maps
Tic Exercice
Tic Health
TicRanking
TicStore
And the 5 or 6 apps with Chinese characters

Finally, I deactivated the motion Gestures, oh and also check for updates after you finished restarting from a previous update because for whatever reason it doesn’t just go straight to latest version.

 

Help: Hacker Guy and NiKTaMeR