Most visited

Recently visited

Download and Test with a Device

You can run and test your app with the Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview in either of these ways:

  • Install Android Wear 2.0 on a supported watch, or
  • Set up an emulator that is running Android Wear 2.0

If you want an environment for basic compatibility testing of your app, you can use your current APK and a supported watch or an emulator. As described below, you don't necessarily need to update your full development environment to do basic testing.

However, if you want to modify your app to target Android Wear 2.0 or use new APIs, you need to update your development environment. See Get Started with the Preview.

Set Up a Watch

You can download a system image and manually flash it to a matching watch. See the table below to download the image for your test watch.

Manually flashing a watch is useful if you need precise control over the test environment or need to reinstall frequently, such as for automated testing.

Warning: Installing a system image on a watch removes all data from the watch, so you should back up your data first.

Preview system images

The preview includes system images for testing your app. Based on your device, you can download a preview system image from one of the following tables and flash it to the corresponding device.

To restore your device to its original state during the preview, you can flash the appropriate retail system image, below, to the device.

Preview image for LGE Watch Urbane 2nd Edition

Caution: Flashing your device will require unlocking the bootloader which may void the device's warranty--proceed at your own risk.

Type of LGE Watch Urbane 2nd Edition image Download/Checksums
Preview image for testing nemo-nvd83h-factory-48ac950c.tgz
MD5: dd351884cce9fb5bf1bdec0a8e5f56e3
SHA-1: 48ac950c48faef96a7770e3c1acb56d23a28d859
Non-preview image (for after testing) nemo-mnc40x-factory-fa528bec.tgz
MD5: 0b8ba3653d5a93cb854f4d7409d7b6c9
SHA-1: fa528bec8aba3bf6c7d901ba63cd6ea0a08dbeb0

Preview image for Huawei Watch

Caution: Flashing your device will require unlocking the bootloader which shall void the device's warranty--proceed at your own risk.

Type of Huawei Watch image Download/Checksums
Preview image for testing sturgeon-nvd83h-factory-cb5a11ab.tgz
MD5: 38c1047992b1d28f6833d9f6c8470cdc
SHA-1: cb5a11ab0260ea3ca7da5894e73e41f70357da6b
Non-preview image (for after testing) sturgeon-mec23l-factory-48003078.tgz
MD5: 417b5cbddb29a2262bce133e283d2732
SHA-1: 4800307843580f818557dd7c43d8ba2161e289b2

Flash a watch

The steps for flashing an image to a watch are similar to the steps provided for flashing to a phone. After you back up your watch data, use steps in this section to flash the image to the specific watch that matches the image (e.g., you must use an LGE Watch Urbane 2nd Edition for the corresponding image).

Warning: Installing a system image on a watch removes all data from the watch, so you should back up your data first.

Set up the watch to be flashed

From the phone, unpair ("Forget") the watch. Then on the watch, enable the Developer Options menu and ADB debugging as follows:

  1. Open the Settings menu on the watch.
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the menu. If no Developer Options item is provided, tap About.
  3. Tap the build number 7 times.
  4. From the Settings menu, tap the Developer Options item.
  5. Enable ADB debugging.

Confirm installation of the fastboot tool

To flash a device using one of the system images, confirm that you have the fastboot tool in the platform-tools/ directory of the Android SDK. Be sure that you have the latest version of the Android SDK Platform-tools from the SDK Manager.

After you confirm that you have the fastboot tool, add the tool to your PATH environment variable so the tool can be found when you flash the watch.

Transfer the image to the watch

To download a preview image and flash it to the watch:

  1. Download and unzip the appropriate system image from a "Preview image for testing" row in a table above.
  2. Attach the watch charger to the watch and plug the USB cord (from the charger) into your computer.
  3. Use the following adb command to confirm that the watch is available for flashing: adb devices
  4. Use the following adb command to start the device in fastboot mode: adb reboot bootloader
  5. If necessary, use one of following two commands to unlock the device's bootloader. This step erases all data on the device: fastboot flashing unlock or, for some devices, fastboot oem unlock
  6. On the watch, select the Unlock option.
  7. Navigate to the directory where you unzipped the system image in Step 1. At the top level of that directory, execute the flash-all script by typing flash-all.sh or, in the case of Windows, flash-all.bat. The following may need to precede the command: ./

Set up the watch and begin testing

After the flash-all script finishes, your watch reboots. Pair the watch with a phone or tablet. The preview now is available for testing on the watch. Before installing an app, perform the following steps on the watch to re-secure the watch's bootloader:

  1. Open the Settings menu (on the watch).
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the menu and tap About.
  3. Tap the build number 7 times.
  4. From the Settings menu, tap the Developer Options item.
  5. Enable ADB debugging.
  6. Connect the watch to your computer and tap Always allow from this computer.
  7. Use the following adb command to start the device in fastboot mode: adb reboot bootloader
  8. Use the following command to lock the device's bootloader: fastboot flashing lock or, for some devices, fastboot oem lock
  9. On the watch, continue the boot by choosing Start and touching '0'.

Your watch is ready for you to install and run your app:

  1. Open your app in Android Studio.
  2. Select your Wear app module name from the Run/Debug configuration drop-down menu (typically wear).
  3. Click the Play button.
  4. In the Select Deployment Target box, click your device.

After your app is installed on the watch, the app should run.

When testing is completed, follow the steps for removing the preview.

Remove the preview from a watch

When testing with the preview is done, unpair ("Forget") the watch from the phone and restore the watch as follows:

  1. Download and unzip the appropriate system image from a "Non-preview image" row in a table above.
  2. Manually flash the image to the watch using steps similar to those in Transfer the image to the watch, except that you flash the non-preview image to the watch.

Note: Removing a preview system image requires a full device reset and removes all user data on the device.

Set Up an Emulator

To test with the Android Emulator, create a virtual device in Android Studio as follows:

  1. Open the AVD Manager by selecting Tools > Android > AVD Manager.
  2. Click Create Virtual Device.
  3. In the Category pane, select Wear and choose a hardware profile. The Android Wear 2.0 Developer Preview is only optimized for round devices currently, so we recommend not using the square or chin profiles for now. Click Next.
  4. Select an N image to download. The images may be on the x86 tab instead of the Recommended tab, until installed. For example, select the image with the Release Name of N, the API Level of N, and the Target of "Android 6.X (with Android Wear)". When the download and installation are complete, click Finish and then click Next.
  5. Verify the configuration of the Android Virtual Device (AVD) and click Finish.

You can now test an application with a virtual preview device in the Android Emulator. For more information about using virtual devices, see Managing AVDs with the AVD Manager.

Hooray!