Google’s Pixel Watch series has had this annoying AOD problem since day one

Summary

• Custom watch faces lack auto-brightness support on Pixel Watches with Always-on Display.
• Google has known about the issue since December 2022, but has not provided a fix.
• Wear OS 5 will soon introduce a new, mandatory watch face format (WFF), potentially affecting existing custom faces and possibly addressing this problem.

Google had a slow start with the Pixel Watch in 2022, but it made serious headway with its 2023-released successor. Now, leaks surrounding the Pixel Watch 3 are in full swing, with indications that the wearable might support UWB and be available in more than one size, albeit with a similar design as its predecessor(s).

Considering that the upcoming watch might be a solid wearable, we want Google to offer a fix for a frustrating and long-standing Pixel Watch issue.

Google offers several stock watch faces for its Pixel Watch 1 and Pixel Watch 2, and users have the option to download and use custom watch faces available on the Google Play Store and from third-party websites. However, an issue with the latter has long been plaguing Pixel Watch owners, with no fix in sight.

If you use a custom watch face with any Pixel Watch with Always-on Display enabled (without tilt to wake), the watch’s auto-brightness feature ceases from working as intended. This does not happen with stock watch faces.

So, for example, let’s say you’re using your Pixel watch in a dark room, it will adjust its auto-brightness to a low level to prevent strain on your eyes. When you stop using the watch, it will automatically kick in to the Always-on Display mode to help you glean information at a glance. Now, let’s say you walk out of the dark room into a well-lit one, or you walk out of your house to soak in some sunlight — the watch will not auto-adjust its brightness to compensate for the brighter room or the direct glare from the sunlight. It will remain stuck at the brightness it auto-adjusted to when you were last using the watch in a dark room, making it difficult to peek at information at a glance.

The same is true vice versa, i.e., when you walk into a dark room after using your watch in a well-lit room, your watch will maintain its glaring Always-on Display brightness instead of toning it down to accommodate the darker room. It’s only when you manually wake the watch that it will auto-adjust its brightness according to your environment.

This is not an isolated issue, or one that only affects a few users. It affects all Pixel Watch 1 and Watch 2 owners using a custom watch face with Always-on Display enabled and tilt to wake disabled. We’re facing the same issue with watch faces from the likes of Facer and WatchMaker.

Google has known about the issue for a while now

Google knows of the issue. It has been raised on multiple instances as far back as December 2022. For reference, the first Pixel Watch was released in October 2022. The last time Google acknowledged the glitch was in a comment on the issue tracker thread in December 2022, saying, “We have shared this with our product and engineering team and will update this issue with more information as it becomes available.” Since then, it has been radio silent about it. It could likely be that the issue is not on the tech giant’s radar because not many people have complained about it. The official issue tracker thread only has 88 impact votes on it.

If you’d like to see Google fix the issue, head to the issue tracker thread and tap on the +1 button on the top right. Hopefully, by bringing more attention to the issue, Google might actually roll out a fix for the issue and stop sweeping it under the rug.

Wear OS 5 might save the day

We already know that Wear OS 5 will introduce a new mandatory Watch Face Format (WFF) for watch faces, where users will only have “access to watch faces that have met [Google’s] performance and quality standards.” The tech giant said that “to ensure the best possible experience for our users, we’re focusing on watch faces that meet these quality standards,” indicating that your existing custom watch faces might not work when you upgrade to Wear OS 5.

It could be that Google has the fix reserved for its OS drop, but we’ll only know that for certain once we can get our hands on the new OS on an old Pixel Watch 1 or Pixel Watch 2. The tech giant’s Made by Google event is scheduled for August 13, and we’ll likely learn more about the update then.

Thanks: Armando