Hi, did anyone tried compose on wear os? We are cr...

# compose

[Vojtech Hrdina]

Hi, did anyone tried compose on wear os? We are creating new app and we are not sure if we can already start with compose or use xml. It looks like there are some wear composable components but I wasn’t able to find BoxInsetLayout and other components specific to wear os.
https://developer.android.com/jetpack/androidx/releases/wear-compose

[matvei]

Hello! Wear Compose is currently in the alpha early stages and is not recommended for production, as there are many features missing still.

That being said, it's under rapid development right now and we would appreciate your feedback and bugs filed if you try this APIs.

[Thomas]

@matvei what's the best place to report feedback about Wear Compose?

[matvei]

I believe this should direct you to the right component to file bugs:

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/new?component=1077552&template=1598429

[matvei]

If you have architectural questions/suggestion or discussions you want to have - we can have it here or in the bug as well 🙂

[Thomas]

Thanks for the link! Just created an issue with something I noticed on my watch.

[Thomas]

Is there a reason that androidx.wear.compose.material.Colors is so limited? I cannot find a way to change for example the background, surface, or onSurfaceVariantX colors.

[matvei]

Good question. I think the background is not allowed to be changed as it should be always black in order to stay consistent and to preserve the battery. For surface and onSurface I think it is more reasonable to change them. Worth to file a feature request for sure!

[Thomas]

Are there any official guidelines somewhere that mention that colored backgrounds are not “recommended”? I know that in the past there were lots of Wear apps with colored background (including some Google apps, and my production app). Also the system itself had colored background on multiple places.

The Android developers site has some Wear screenshots with colored backgrounds: https://developer.android.com/training/wearables/data/network-access#user-interface-considerations

The only thing I could find about colors is the following: https://developer.android.com/training/wearables/design/color
Note that it says “You can customize all of these colors for your app.“. It does not mention that black backgrounds are “recommended” or so.

[Thomas]

I noticed that ScalingLazyListScope.item(s) functions are missing key arguments. Any reason why they are not available? I created an issue here with my use case: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/199763348

[matvei]

There's no reason to miss this parameter, thanks for filing!

[matvei]

Regarding colors, would be super helpful if you could just file a bug with all the findings. It seems like either docs are outdated or we should just open this colors for customisation (I personally prefer the latter)

[matvei]

cc @John Nichol

[Thomas]

Ok thanks, created an issue here: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/199754668

[John Nichol]

@Thomas thanks for raising bugs and features

[John Nichol]

Regarding Colors our UX guidance is evolving and the Wear Compose components are being designed in-line with the new Wear Material Design Guidance.

[John Nichol]

We are in the process of getting the guidance published and documentation updated. As Matvei@ said the main motivation is reducing battery usage with darker colors - but also encouraging more app consistency.

[John Nichol]

But I will engage with our UX team to discuss and ask them to share the rationale

[Thomas]

Great, thanks for explaining. Would love to see these colors to be customizable even though they are not recommended. I would prefer to keep the current app theme I use in production (with colored background), or at least provide an option to users to use the old colors. Users don’t like changes.