[Feature Request] WearOS companion app

[codokie]

This may be tricky to implement properly/efficiently and very time consuming, so I’d totally understand if you decide that wearable port is not a priority at the moment.

However, it could prove to be very useful to those who want to synchronize steps counted using a watch while being away from the phone (and vice versa).

I would be willing to test it on my end of course.

There is also the “Health Connect” API which could probably used to achieve the same thing, so that may be a good alternative.

Another thing to take into consideration is that WearOS likely relies on Google Play Services in order to pair with the phone. So it creating a separate flavor of the app that is not to be published to F-Droid may be required. Luckily, IzzyOnDroid is not as strict about the matter, so it should still be possible to publish it there.

[nvllz]

At first, I thought, 'Why not?', but then I reached the 'Google Play Services' part. I don't want the app to rely on something like that. Technically speaking, I have never owned such a device.. describing it as 'tricky' is a huge understatement :D

I'll leave it open for now, but there's like a 1% chance of it being implemented unless you do it yourself, sorry.

[codokie]

I totally get it, especially since you don’t own such a device.

Sadly I don’t have any experience with wearable app development, so I may be a bit hesitant to try to do it all by myself.

While the idea is probably easy to grasp, it’s not clear how to determine when the user is walking with both the phone and the watch, and how to handle steps counted while the watch was disconnected from the phone.

it may also be daunting to implement a reliable background service that doesn’t eat much battery.

What do you think of the “Health Connect” API? I have no idea whether it also depends on Google Play Services. In case it doesn’t, would you be interested in adding support for it?

[nvllz]

Okay, I did some research and it seems rather doable. If I understand how this API works, it's about gathering activities into a central db. We could access it instead of getting step data directly from the sensor, opt in. It also seems to not be that intrusive, people who would use it should already have some other app to handle things for their wearables (Google Fit or sth? not sure). Well, I'll look into implementing it in the future, but it's really interesting and would be cool to have.

While the idea is probably easy to grasp, it’s not clear how to determine when the user is walking with both the phone and the watch, and how to handle steps counted while the watch was disconnected from the phone.

If I understand correctly this API takes care of it, and my work would be to add a switch in settings for people to pick between getting step data from API or directly from device's step counting sensor (current way, default) and update the MotionService, so you rely on Stepsy or this Health Connect API; should be no duplicates if implemented correctly I guess.