
Glympse says it made the decision to limit access to these lists because it would take too long to load an entire address book, and would require a lot of scrolling.
WUNDERLIST ANDROID WEAR ANDROID
The one downside of the Android Wear version of Glympse is that you can only send your location to contacts in your call log or your favorites list. The message expires after a user-specified time, so you don’t have to worry about Glympse constantly sharing your location.

Your recipient receives a text message with a link they can open in a Web browser or the Glympse app that shows your location on a map and real-time tracking. Running late for a meeting or trying to meet up with friends for a night out? Glympse can help by updating people of your whereabouts.įrom your watch, and using your phone’s GPS capability, you can send your location to a friend with just a couple of taps.

Some may find this annoying (you can disable this feature), but I’d rather do that than spend a beautiful Saturday afternoon looking under the couch cushions for my phone. For example, when I went to the laundry room located in the basement of my apartment building, my LG G Watch buzzed and alerted me that the connection was lost between my watch and phone. Since your smartwatch requires a connection to your phone to work, Find My Phone can also alert you if you are out of range of your handset. If you’ve misplaced your mobile, you can press the “Tap to find!” button on your watch, and it will play a sound on your phone to help you locate it.
WUNDERLIST ANDROID WEAR FOR ANDROID
Find My Phone for Android Wear is designed to help prevent such situations. Case in point: This past weekend, I spent three hours tracking down my smartphone because I left it at a restaurant after lunch. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older or just have a lot on my mind, but I’m becoming quite forgetful lately. Its user interface isn’t as slick as Udell’s version, but it works, and it’s free. A company called Aggro makes a similar app called Wear Apps Manager. It shows you stats for each Android Wear app (storage, permissions) and gives you the option to uninstall it or open it on your phone. Wear App Manager takes the guesswork out of the equation. For example, the to-do-list app Wunderlist offers smartwatch functionality (push notifications and note creation), but it only shows up as a regular app on your phone and not as a dedicated app on your watch. It’s useful because it’s not always clear which apps have Android Wear compatibility. This app lives on your smartphone and shows you all your Android Wear apps in one place. It’s a simple and handy app that I’d recommend to any Android Wear user.Īnother good app to have is Wear App Manager by Udell Enterprises. Swipe the screen again, and you get a menu where you can adjust various phone settings (volume, Wi-Fi, etc.), change the brightness of your watch’s display, and view battery life. With it, you can swipe from the edge of your watch’s display to bring up a drawer of apps and quickly tap on the one you want. But a third-party app called Wear Mini Launcher offers a better solution. Currently, your only options are to use a voice command, which isn’t ideal if, say, you’re in a meeting, or swiping through a long list of apps. One particular issue is launching third-party apps from the watch. In fact, it can be downright frustrating.

Similar to the Android operating system, Android Wear isn’t the most intuitive to use right out of box. Most are free, and I’ve categorized them by what kind of wearer they might be good for.

Below, you’ll find a selection of apps that fall into the latter group. Predictably, some are junk, but there are also plenty of useful ones. The Google Play store is now filled with dozens and dozens of Android Wear apps for your smartwatch. But with a few apps, they can do a lot more so you can take out your phone less often. Whether you have the Moto 360, Samsung Gear Live or LG G Watch, you’ve probably discovered that wearable devices do a pretty good job of showing you your phone notifications. So you bought an Android Wear smartwatch.
