This week Samsung released a new software update for the Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. The latest update brings several new health and wellness features, including a sleep coaching program, a new interval target feature, and new body composition insights. But it appears the latest update isn't playing nicely with some older watch faces.

Reddit user u/malbry reports (via Android Police) that some watch faces have stopped working as intended on the Galaxy Watch 4 following the update. Specifically, the watch face no longer updates while in ambient mode with the Always-on display (AOD) turned on unless the user manually taps the display. In other words, details like weather and time info aren't automatically updating as they should. You have to manually tap on the screen to make sure you're seeing the up-to-date information.

My favourite hand-coded watchface that I've been using for several years has stopped working correctly on my Samsung GW4 after today's system update. Specifically, the watchface is not updating while in ambient mode with AOD set to on unless the screen is touched.

According to the Redditor, the issue is tied to the onTimeTick API, which is responsible for updating the watch screen in ambient mode. After the new update, this API is not being called by the system while the ambient mode is on. As such, the watch face data is not being refreshed at the regular interval (once every minute).

Luckily, this bug only affects watch faces that use WatchFaceService.Engine. Newer watch faces no longer rely on this service engine, so this bug is unlikely to affect everyone. However, if you have a collection of old watch faces that you have been using for years, you may want to hold off updating the latest update as you may run into issues.

It's not immediately clear if this behavior is an intended change or a bug that'll be resolved in a future update. We'll be sure to let you know if we learn any new details about this issue.

Are you facing any issues with your watch faces after installing the latest Galaxy Watch 4 update? Let us know in the comments below.