Which Galaxy Watch models can install new watch faces

The rule, in one line

A Galaxy Watch can install these watch faces if it is running One UI 8 Watch — the release built on Wear OS 6 — or anything newer. That is the entire rule. Every model question below is really a question about whether a particular watch can get to that version, and for everything from the Galaxy Watch 4 onwards the answer is yes.

It is worth being precise about why the requirement is a software version rather than a model list, because it explains the one result that surprises people. Installing a face from a phone app uses Watch Face Push, an API that arrived with Wear OS 6. A watch without that API has nowhere for the face to land. So a two-year-old watch that has taken its updates can install these faces, and a much newer watch that has never been updated cannot — the hardware is not what decides it.

Every model, and where it stands

Oldest first, because the people who need this table are the ones with an older watch. Every model in it can install these faces; the column that matters is whether it needs an update first.

The Galaxy Watch FE shares the Watch 4's hardware and behaves identically here, which is why it sits with the Watch 4 on its model page rather than having one of its own. Every Classic, Pro and LTE variant matches the plain model in the same row — the bezel and the cellular radio have nothing to do with watch faces.

Three models arrived already able to do this: the Watch 8 shipped with One UI 8 Watch, and the Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2 ship with One UI 9 Watch on Wear OS 7, which is a generation beyond what is needed. Nothing to update, nothing to check.

Checking your own watch

Twenty seconds, on the watch itself, and it settles the question for good.

1. On the watch: Settings → About watch → Software information.
2. Read the One UI Watch version line. Eight or higher and you are ready. Anything lower — One UI 5, 6 or 7 Watch — is below the floor.
3. If it is lower, open Galaxy Wearable on your phone → Watch settings → Watch software update, put the watch on its charger, and leave it. A major version update takes a while and the watch restarts itself when it is done.

The Wear OS number and the One UI Watch number move together and either one answers the question: One UI 8 Watch is Wear OS 6. If the screen shows you only one of the two, that is the one to read.

The fastest check of all is not a menu at all. Install the app, open it next to your watch, and it either finds a watch it can install to or tells you which of the two things is wrong. It takes less time than reading this section and it tests the real path rather than a version number.

The watches this will never work on

Galaxy Watch 3 and older, and Gear-series watches — these run Tizen, not Wear OS. This is the one line on the page that is not going to improve with time, so it is worth being blunt about it: the Galaxy Watch 3, the original 2018 Galaxy Watch, the Galaxy Watch Active and Active2, and the whole Gear range run Samsung's own Tizen operating system. Samsung never offered a Wear OS upgrade for any of them and never will — the two platforms share no code and the watches were not built for it.

Those watches are not without watch faces; they simply have a different, and by now mostly frozen, supply of them. Why a Tizen face cannot be carried across, and what a Watch 3 owner can realistically still do, is the whole subject of the Wear OS and Tizen guide.

Classic, Pro, FE and the sizes

Compatibility does not vary by variant. A Watch 6 Classic installs exactly what a Watch 6 installs; a Watch 5 Pro matches a Watch 5; an LTE model matches its Bluetooth twin. If the base model is in the table above, every version of it is.

What the variant does change is which faces look right. A rotating bezel puts a physical ring around the display, so dials with a marked outer track line up with it and read like a mechanical watch, while artwork that runs edge to edge gets visually cropped by the bezel. And case size changes how much room a layout has: a 47 mm Watch Ultra carries sub-dials and complications that would be cramped on a 40 mm Watch 4. Both are preference, not compatibility — nothing will refuse to install.

What the phone has to be

Android, paired with the watch in the Galaxy Wearable app. In practice that means the same setup you already have if the watch is working at all: an Android phone, the Galaxy Wearable app installed, and the watch paired and connected rather than merely remembered. Bluetooth carries the face across, so the two need to be near each other while it transfers.

There is no iPhone version, and that is not a decision we are keeping open. Samsung dropped iOS support for Galaxy Watches with the Watch 4 in 2021 — the Galaxy Wearable app the whole pairing depends on is Android-only, so there is nothing for a phone-side face app to attach to.

Once a face is installed it belongs to the watch, and the phone stops mattering entirely: the dial keeps working with the phone off, dead or in another country. That side of it is covered in the guide on using a watch without a phone.

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