Samsung unveiled the all-new Galaxy Watch 5 lineup alongside the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 earlier this month. The new range of Wear OS smartwatches brings several hardware and software improvements to the table, including a couple of new watch faces. If you own an older Galaxy Watch 4 model and would like to install the new Galaxy Watch 5 watch faces on your smartwatch, you're in luck!
XDA Member niff2005 has extracted the APK files for five new Galaxy Watch 5 watch faces from the firmware, and you can sideload them on your Galaxy Watch 4 using ADB. However, only four of the five available watch faces work on the Galaxy Watch 4. The new HealthMonitor watch face does not work on the Galaxy Watch 4, but that's likely because an older version is already available on the smartwatch. Check out the following gallery for the remaining watch faces you can try on your Galaxy Watch 4.
Screenshots: niff2005
To install these watch faces on your Galaxy Watch 4, download the ZIP file with the respective APKs from the XDA forum thread linked below. Enable ADB debugging and Debug over Wi-Fi from the Developer Options.
Connect your watch to a Wi-Fi network and note the IP address mentioned under the Debug over Wi-Fi option. Make sure your PC is connected to the same Wi-Fi network and open a command prompt window in the directory where you have ADB platform tools installed. Type "adb connect" followed by the IP address in the command prompt window and hit enter.
You should instantly see a prompt on your watch asking you if you'd like to allow debugging. Select OK, if you want to allow debugging one time, or Always allow from this computer if you don't want to repeat the process. Now, type the following ADB command and hit enter to install the watch face APK. For this command to work as intended, you also need to have the respective APK files in the same directory as ADB platform tools.
adb -s "IP address" install filename.apk
Once the installation is complete, you should see "Success" in the command prompt window. Now, disconnect from ADB using the following command.
adb disconnect
You should now be able to see the new watch face on your Galaxy Watch 4. If you wish to edit the watch faces, niff2005 recommends editing them on your smartwatch instead of the Galaxy Wearable app, as editing on the app seems to break the watch faces.
Download the new Galaxy Watch 5 watch faces for your Galaxy Watch 4
As mentioned earlier, four of the five watch face APKs should work as intended on all Galaxy Watch 4 models. But your mileage may vary.
Were you able to get these Galaxy Watch 5 watch faces running on your Galaxy Watch 4? Let us know in the comments section below.