Pebble is one of the most popular smartwatch brands on the market. Although it’s a good quality watch, there are many different watch faces to choose from with some being more stylish than others. I was looking for ways to customize my Pebble Time Round and found that you can create your own custom watch face with a little bit of code.
By making your own custom watch faces, you have the ability to change how your watch looks based on whatever interests you. In this article, I go into detail about how to make your own custom Pebble Time round watch face and give you an example so you can get started as well.
What is a custom watch face?
A custom watch face is a different way to customize your Pebble Time Round. These are the settings that you change in order to make it different than the default watch face. You go into your settings and choose what you want your watch to look like. It’s very easy and can be done with a little bit of code.
How to make your own custom watch face
Remember, you will need to have a Pebble Time Round watch to be able to make your own custom watch face.
Designing the layout of your watch
To start, you will want to design the layout of your watch. You can do this by first sketching out a rough idea of what you want on the watch face. You’ll need to include all of the information that is important for your watch face, like time and date, as well as other statistics that you may find interesting. Then, you should take this design and transfer it onto paper or another digital platform so you have a visual representation of what your layout will be.
Next, you’ll need to decide how much information you would like on your watch face at any given time. A good place to start is by deciding how many columns your watch face should have and then choosing which elements will go in those columns. This includes time, date, weather conditions, steps taken, battery life remaining, or anything else that would be relevant to whatever statistic that you’re tracking with your watch face.
Once there are some sections set up on paper on how things will appear on the screen during use, it’s time to create the actual code for your watch face. To make sure everything displays correctly when it comes down to the implementation stage, we recommend making a prototype before proceeding with this step-by-step guide so that everything lines up properly in relation to each other.
Adding features to your watch face
First, you need to download the Pebble Time Round SDK from the Pebble website. Next, create a new project in Visual Studio for your watch face and add the code for the features you want. Once you have created your watch face with all of the features that you want, save it as an XML file to be used on your smartwatch.
A few important things to note are that there are a few limitations to what can be done with this method; specifically, there is no way to change the color of the time or date or add custom sounds or vibrations. Also, if you have a feature that requires access to Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) data such as heart rate monitors, GPS receivers, or phone notifications, then it won’t work unless you use a physical connection like an ANT+ dongle connected to your computer.
Making it interactive
The first step to creating your own custom watch face is to determine the type of interactions you want in the watch face. Typically, there are three types of interactions.
-A numeric input (Adding a number)
-An on/off switch (Turning an option on or off)
-A button that changes the watch face (Changing which watch face is displayed)
It’s important to make a decision about what type of interaction you want because it will impact how easy it is to create your custom watch face. For example, if you want to create a one-button watch face and use a numeric input, then it would be more difficult than if you wanted to create an interactive two-button watch face.
Generating the code to make a watch face
The first step is to download the Pebble IDE (Integrated Development Environment), which is a program that will allow you to create code for your watch face. The IDE also makes it easier for you to get started with your code. After downloading the software, follow these directions:
Click on Tools > Pebble Developer Toolkit > Library.
Click on the “Add New” button near the bottom of the page.
Scroll down and find “TimeZone.”
Click on that and then click on “Import.”
Your watch face will now be imported into your project folder in the IDE.
Summary
How to make your own custom Pebble Time Round watch face.
A step-by-step article on how to create your own custom watch face for the Pebble Time Round smartwatch.