Developer Steve Troughton-Smith used SpriteKit to create his own Apple Watch face:
https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1049803260478009344
This is an end-around, bypassing Apple’s lack of support for 3rd party watch faces. Scroll through the Twitter thread, check out all the faces. I hope Apple allows this bit of a market to evolve, eventually adding official support.
One concern about all this is the fear that Apple would be liable for watch face copyright infringement. Some say that that’s the reason Apple does not allow 3rd party watch faces. Does this eliminate that liability? Will Apple allow this to continue?
Stay tuned.
I don’t buy the liability argument. I think it’s because Apple doesn’t want the watch to look like the Pebble, for which there are (or were) thousands of hideous faces.
I approve.
Precisely. Go look at the themes people create for code editors or, when Chrome themes. People generally are not good at design.
“One concern about all this is the fear that Apple would be liable for watch face copyright infringement. ”
No concern at all because Apple will never allow this kind of app for the watch. The T&S specifically prohibits this kind of app.
not sure why people are suddenly discovering you can do this now. it’s been possible since watchOS 3 (when they added spritekit). i’d been thinking of doing this for a while, for fun, but didn’t really seem worth the effort, since these wouldn’t be allowed in the app store.