I have decided to focus on supporting the Ollee Watch via Gadgetbridge which I think is a better long-term home. It is open to contributions, already has infrastructure for activity modes (pairing with other FOSS apps like OpenTracks, and is more likely to get visibility.
A self-contained Android companion app for the Ollee watch, talking to it directly over Bluetooth Low Energy.
| Complications | Activity |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Generated per-screen by the accessibility + screenshot CI job.
Complications — pushes one of several values to the watch's 6-character "Name tag" (held under ALARM on the Clock face), refreshed automatically in the background:
- The current temperature in °F (via Open-Meteo).
- The watch's own battery, read over BLE from its firmware reply and shown as volts or a percentage estimate (100% = 3.0 V, 0% = 2.4 V) — toggle between the two on the card.
- Today's step count, read from Android Health Connect (whatever app you use writes it there — a fitness ring, phone pedometer, etc.).
- A custom 6-character string (for experimentation).
Notification badge — counts the phone's undismissed notifications and shows the count in the watch's weekday slot (requires granting Notification access; renders on the Clock face only).
Timers — build and push sets of interval timers to the watch's Timer face, plus a one-tap quick timer and remote start (the watch starts counting the moment the frame lands). The quick timer also has an alarm mode — flip it on to enter a wall-clock time (H:M AM/PM) instead of a duration, and the app sends the watch a one-shot countdown that fires at that time (rolling to the next day for times already past, up to ~24h out). Slots within a set can be sorted by duration or hand-reordered with ▲/▼, and the set library on the dashboard can be reordered the same way.
Alarms are handled by the official Ollee app; FreeOllee's quick timer still offers an alarm-style wall-clock target for one-shot countdowns.
Activity mode — a GPS-tracked walk/run that streams live pace, average pace,
distance, and time to the watch's name tag while you move. Start and stop from the
phone's Activity tab; tap MODE to cycle which metric the watch shows (the change lands
immediately). Average pace is computed over moving time, so standing still doesn't drag
it down. A configurable watch update interval (3s / 15s / 30s / 1m / 5m, picked on the
idle home) throttles how often the name tag is rewritten — longer intervals save watch
battery on long sessions; the interval is fixed for the duration once you start. Pause
and Resume on demand, or let auto-pause stop the clock when you stand still and
resume when you move again (it stands down when the GPS fix goes stale, so a dropped fix
never fakes a pause); while paused the watch shows PAUSE and distance/time freeze. The
session runs in a foreground service with an ongoing notification, so tracking survives the
screen turning off, and it disables the watch's auto-sleep for the duration so pushes keep
landing — then restores your previous auto-sleep setting on stop (and on crash recovery, if
the app is killed mid-session). Distance and pace render in miles/min-mi or km/min-km via
the units toggle. Every session is saved as a Strava-ready track file (SI units, with
per-point altitude) under the app's files/activities/, and your most recent activities
show as a tappable list on the Activity tab (which opens to this idle home, showing live
phone instruments — compass and barometer — with no recording and no GPS until you start).
Works with no watch selected too — it still records the track.
Connection status — every screen shows the current watch link in its top bar (Connected,
Connecting…, or a tappable ⟳ Reconnect), so you always know whether a push will actually reach
the watch.
Originally built as a workaround for GrapheneOS users — the official Ollee app relies on Google Play
Services' Fused Location Provider, which is absent on GrapheneOS. This app uses the
platform LocationManager directly (so location works without Play Services) and also
accepts manual lat/lng entry.
The BLE packet format, CRC-16/CCITT-FALSE implementation, and Nordic UART service/ characteristic UUIDs were reverse-engineered by Arthur86000's FreeOllee. This app re-implements the protocol in-tree rather than depending on the FreeOllee APK.
- BLE protocol notes:
docs/reference/ollee-ble-protocol.md
Super FreeOllee is now a Kotlin Multiplatform app with a single Android target, built with Compose Multiplatform. The debug build command is unchanged:
./gradlew :app:assembleDebug
The debug APK lands in app/build/outputs/apk/debug/.
The app logic and the Compose UI live in commonMain; the Android-specific I/O
(BLE, Health Connect, location, prefs, the background engine) sits behind plain
interfaces with Android implementations injected at startup. iOS is a future step — there are no iOS targets in the build
yet, so this currently builds and ships as an Android app only.
Every merge to main triggers .github/workflows/release.yml, which builds a
release-signed APK, tags the commit v<VERSION> (from the VERSION file),
and publishes it as a GitHub Release — see the
Releases page. A PR can
opt out by putting [skip release] in its title; a companion workflow rejects merges
that forget to bump VERSION. APKs are not committed to the repository.
The easiest way to stay current without hand-downloading each APK is Obtainium — point it at this repo's Releases and it will track, notify, and install new versions for you straight from GitHub.
Super FreeOllee is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0
(see LICENSE). You may redistribute and/or modify it under those terms; any
distributed derivative must remain GPL-licensed with source available.
Copyright (C) 2026 Ken Blizzard-Caron <ken@blizzardcaron.com>
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation,
either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this
program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
The BLE protocol (packet framing, CRC-16/CCITT-FALSE, Nordic UART UUIDs) was originally reverse-engineered by Arthur86000's FreeOllee; this app is an independent in-tree re-implementation. Those are interoperability facts, not copied code — the attribution is a courtesy, not a license obligation (FreeOllee declares no license of its own).