Custom Wear Notifications – Presentation and Instructions

Custom Wear Notifications is a Wear OS application that allows you to customize your watch notifications and ringtone. For each app on your phone, you can assign a custom sound and vibration to play on your watch when you receive a notification.

The app is offered in two versions: a free version and a premium version, called PRO Version. The PRO Version unlocks some features that are not available in the free version.

With this app, you can:

• Set custom sounds and vibrations of your choice, to trigger on your watch, for any app installed on your phone.
• Set a custom ringtone for you watch.
• Set custom keywords that will trigger custom sounds and vibrations when contained in a notification from any app (like the name of a person you are talking with on messaging apps).
• Set notification reminders, to re-trigger the custom sound and vibration of the most recently received notification that you haven’t yet dismissed, after a configurable amount of time.
• Set Text-to-Speech as the sound for certain notifications, to read out loud their content.
• Create your own vibration patterns.
• Set custom sounds and vibrations for important events on the watch, such as low battery, fully charged, charging started, or phone disconnection.
• Ignore DND (Do Not Disturb) on the watch for certain apps/keywords that are important to you.
• Be alerted about incoming notifications even when you are not wearing the watch (if that’s what you want), as certain watches don’t sound for incoming notifications when you are not wearing the watch.
• Configure silent hours for each weekday.
• Customize the notifications on every watch connected to your phone. If you have multiple watches connected, you can customize the notifications for each one individually.

Current limitations:

• Please note that you can only customize the notifications you receive from the phone. The notifications generated by the watch itself (and the apps on it) cannot be currently customized.

How the app works?

The app works by playing the custom sounds and vibrations that you configured for each app on the phone, over the built-in notification sound and vibration of the watch. As you might guess, this results in hearing both the built-in sound/vibration and the custom sound/vibration you set, by default. However, this can be easily avoided using different methods that we explain in the Mute the built-in sound and vibration section below.

Setting up the app

There are a few things you need to do before enjoying the custom notifications. The setup is simple and should take only a few minutes.

1. Make sure you’ve installed the app on both your phone and your watch. The phone app allows you to configure the custom notifications and the watch app is the one that actually plays the custom sounds and vibrations when a notification is received on your phone.
2. Make sure your watch is connected to the phone via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. The custom notifications work only when the watch is connected to your phone. We recommend using Bluetooth since it is faster than Wi-Fi and the custom notifications trigger without any delay.
3. Grant the phone app the permission to access notifications, so that it can relay to the watch the custom notifications that you configured.
   
4. Disable battery optimizations for the app, since on some devices it might make the custom notifications stop working after some time.
   Depending on your device, the steps for disabling the battery optimizations might be a little different. For example, on Google phones, you need to enable the Allow background usage switch, then tap on it and select Unrestricted, like in the photo below.
   Steps 3 and 4 can be done using the message cards that the app displays on the first page, but you can also complete them from the device settings.
   If the app is given access to notifications and the battery optimizations are correctly disabled, both warning cards will disappear.
   
5. Mute the watch’s built-in notification sound and vibration. Check out the Mute the built-in sound and vibration section below.

Once you’ve completed these 5 steps, you should be able to see your watch listed in the app and be able to start configuring the custom notifications the way you want. If you have multiple watches connected to the phone, you can change between them and configure them individually.

Mute the built-in notification sound and vibration

Since the app works by playing the custom sounds and vibrations that you configured over the watch’s built-in notification sound and vibration, by default you’ll hear both the custom sound/vibration and the built-in sound/vibration for each incoming notification. This behavior is not desired, but there are ways to fix this.

Method 1

If your watch allows it, you can set the built-in notification sound and vibration to be muted or silent.

For this, go to your watch settings, and click on Sounds and vibration (or its equivalent on your watch):

Then go to Notification sound and set it to Silent, Mute or No Sound.

And lastly, go to Notification vibration and set it to Silent, Mute, or No Vibration.

Method 2

If the first method is not an option on your watch, you can go in the app to Notification settings, click to show more settings, and enable the Use Media volume and Delay custom vibrations options. The first option will make the custom notifications sounds volume be controllable using the Media volume of the watch, instead of the default Notifications volume, while the second option will try to override the built-in vibration. After that, you can set the default Notification volume of the watch to 0, to mute the built-in notification sound completely.

Custom notifications

If you’ve muted the built-in notifications volume using the first method explained above, the volume for the custom notifications sounds can be controlled using the Notifications volume of the watch (the standard behavior).

However, if you’ve used the second method, the custom notifications sounds volume can be controlled using the Media volume of the watch.

Depending on the settings you configured under Notification settings, you can make the custom notifications trigger on the watch even when you are not wearing it or when the phone is in use. This might be different than the standard behavior for the built-in notifications, so there might be cases when you’ll hear the custom sounds and vibrations you set without actually being able to see the notification itself on the watch (since the watch might only display the notifications when you are wearing it). You can fine-tune the notification settings to match the behaviors you prefer.

The custom notifications also follow some of the standard behaviors for the built-in notifications. For example, you won’t hear them if the watch is under Do Not Disturb (DND), Theatre Mode, Mute, etc. (unless you use the Ignore DND and Silent Hours option for your custom rules). The notifications that don’t make a sound or vibration on the phone, will not trigger custom notifications.

The notifications that don’t make a sound or vibration on the phone, will not trigger custom notifications. You can change this behavior using the Notify silent notifications setting from the advanced settings of each rule.

The app lets you create two types of rules: app rules and keyword rules. There are also a bunch of special rules that are detailed in the section below.

You can create custom rules using the + button on the bottom-right corner of the first screen. In the free version, you can select only one app at a time, but on the PRO Version you can select multiple apps at a time and all of them will be set to the custom sound and vibration that you configured.

Special rules

Global notifications rule

This special rule lets you assign a custom sound and vibration for each app on your phone that does not have a custom rule for it. For example, if you have a custom app rule defined for app “A” and no custom rule for app “B”, when a notification from app “A” arrives, the custom sound and vibration you set in the custom rule for “A” will trigger on the watch, but when a notification from app “B” arrives, the sound and vibration you set for this special rule will be used instead.

Watch Fully Charged rule

This special rule lets you assign a custom sound and vibration to play when the watch gets fully charged. In the advanced settings of this rule, you can customize the fully charged level and configure to receive a notification on the phone when the event happens.

Please note that there might be delays of up to 15 minutes between the moment the watch reaches this battery level, and the moment you are notified about it. This delay allows the app to be battery-efficient, by not checking too often the watch battery level.

Watch Low Battery rule

This special rule lets you assign a custom sound and vibration to play when the watch gets to a low-battery level. In the advanced settings of this rule, you can customize the low battery level and configure to receive a notification on the phone when the event happens.

Please note that there might be delays of up to 15 minutes between the moment the watch reaches this battery level, and the moment you are notified about it. This delay allows the app to be battery-efficient, by not checking too often the watch battery level.

Watch Starts Charging rule

This special rule lets you assign a custom sound and vibration to play when the watch starts charging. In the advanced settings of this rule, you can configure to receive a notification on the phone when the event happens.

Phone Disconnection rule

This special rule lets you assign a custom sound and vibration to play when the watch gets disconnected from the phone.

Watch Ringtone rule

This special rule lets you customize the ringtone and call vibration of your watch. Your watch needs to be connected to your phone for this feature to work.

After you’ve configured the sound and vibration you prefer, you’d need to mute the built-in ringtone and call vibration of the watch, in a similar way as you did for the notifications. There are 2 ways to do this.

Method 1

If your watch allows it, you can set the built-in ringtone and call vibration to be muted or silent.

For this, go to your watch settings, and click on Sounds and vibration (or its equivalent on your watch):

Then go to Ringtone and set it to Silent, Mute or No Sound.

And lastly, go to Call vibration and set it to Silent, Mute, or No Vibration.

Method 2

If your watch does not allow you mute the built-in ringtone, a workaround is to enable the Use Media volume setting from the Notification settings section in the app, and optionally, set the ringtone volume of the watch to 0. The app will automatically set the ringtone volume to 0 when you receive a call, so that the built-in ringtone is muted. However, if you are not able to mute the built-in call vibration with the first method, there is currently no other workaround that allows the custom call vibration to work.

Additional notes

By default (and if you have not enabled the Use Media volume setting), you can control the volume for the ringtone using the standard ringtone volume of the watch. Otherwise, you need to use the Media volume.

Please note that some watches do not play the built-in ringtone (or the custom one) if you are not wearing the watch. If your watch does this and you want to play the custom ringtone even when you are not wearing it, enable the Use Media volume setting while making sure that the Watch on wrist setting is disabled.

App rules

These rules are specific to the individual apps that you choose. If you have an app rule for app “A”, the sound and vibration that you set in the rule for it will play on the watch when you receive notifications on the phone from that app.

Keyword rules

These rules allow you to set specific words that will trigger specific sounds and vibrations when they are contained in a notification from any app. You can use them to determine for example the person that has just sent you a message, or the importance of the notification, before actually looking at the notification itself.

The keyword rules have priority over the app rules, meaning that if you have a custom rule for app “A” and a notification from that app contains a keyword you have a rule for, the sound and vibration that you set on the keyword rule will be used, instead of the ones from the app’s rule.

You can also use keyword rules to mute specific notifications from certain apps. If some notification is unimportant to you, just create a keyword rule for a piece of text that notification always contains and set the custom sound and vibration of that rule to no sound and no vibration. This way, the notifications containing that keyword will be muted on the watch.

Creating custom vibrations

The app allows you to create your own custom vibration pattern. You can do this by clicking on the Create custom vibration button from the change vibration dialog or when setting the vibration of a new rule.

You create the custom vibration by tapping on the tappable surface. A custom vibration is made up of multiple vibrations and gaps intervals. When you hold your finger on the surface, you’ll make the pattern vibrate for as long as you keep touching the screen. Likewise, when you don’t hold your finger on the screen, the pattern will contain a gap of silence. The numbers that appear below the tappable surface represent milliseconds and they dictate for how long your device vibrates or doesn’t vibrate within the pattern.

You can also preview the pattern before saving, reset it to start from scratch or undo the last added vibration or gap. Note that the final gap of the pattern will be automatically deleted when saving the pattern.

There are no limitations on how long a pattern can be, but please remember that it’s difficult to interrupt vibrations that are too long (you’d have to kill the app from recent apps, restart the watch, or wait for a new notification that has a shorter vibration). Also, we recommend you don’t make your watch vibrate for extended amounts of time at once (more than 20 seconds) as this can drain its battery.

Speak Notifications (Text-to-Speech)

The app allows you to use the Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine of the watch as the sound for your custom notifications. This option is available only in the PRO Version.

The settings related to TTS can be modified in your watch settings. From there you can change the TTS engine provider, the language to use, the speech rate, the voice, etc.

On most Wear OS watches these settings are under General->Text-to-Speech.

Notification Reminders

Notification Reminders is a feature available in the PRO Version that makes the watch re-trigger the custom sound and vibration of the most recently received notification that you haven’t yet dismissed.

For example, if you set the notification reminders to be at 30-minute intervals and until dismissed, if a notification arrives and you don’t dismiss it in the next 30 minutes, the app will consider that you haven’t “seen” the notification and replay the custom sound and vibration that you’ve configured for that kind of notification. Depending on the number of repetitions that you’ve selected, the reminders might continue 1, 2, or 3 times, or until the notification is dismissed on the phone or watch. In any case, if a new notification arrives, the notification reminders for the old notification will be canceled and new reminders will be created for the new notification.

You can modify the settings for the notification reminders by going to the Info page. From there you can enable/disable the reminders and set the interval between them and the number of repetitions.

The app might ask you to give it permission to schedule exact alarms. This is required in order for the reminders to be precise. Without this permission, the reminders will not be precise (for example, if you set 10-minute intervals, the reminders might trigger after more than 10 minutes).

If you want to disable notification reminders for certain rules, you can do this from the Notification Reminders setting, available in the advanced setting of those rules.

Watch app

The watch app has the vital role of playing the custom notifications sounds and vibrations that you’ve configured in the mobile app.

Apart from this, you can use it to easily turn on and off the custom notifications or to see if there are any things that are preventing the custom notifications from triggering. For example, if the volume for Notifications or Media (if you enabled the Use Media volume option) is 0, the app will inform you. Likewise for Do Not Disturb being enabled or the ringer mode of the watch being set to Muted or Vibrations only.

If you want to receive the custom notifications only when the watch is worn on the wrist, the app will ask you to allow it to have access to the body sensors permission. The app will then use the so-called “low latency off-body sensor” to determine when you are wearing the watch. If your watch does not have this sensor, the custom notifications will sound even when you are not wearing it and the setting for playing the custom notifications only when you wear the watch will not be available.

If you want to customize your ringtone, the app will ask you to allow it to have access to the phone state permission. This permission will allow the app to know when you are receiving a call, so that it can start playing your custom ringtone.

Work profile/secure folder/private space

The work profile/secure folder/private space is an isolated area on your phone, where the apps and data you have there are not visible outside of it.

The Custom Wear Notifications app is not able to see the apps installed in your work profile/secure folder/private space if it’s not part of that space (which, in turn, will make the apps outside of the space not visible to the app). However, Custom Wear Notifications does not work if installed in your work profile/secure folder/private space due to a limitation of the operating system, that makes all the apps installed there not able to detect and communicate with Wear OS watches. If you install the app there, you’ll see that your watch is not detected.

Fortunately, there is a simple workaround you can use in order to set custom rules for your work profile/secure folder/private space apps. Simply have those apps installed outside of the space also. You don’t have to configure them in any way, just have them installed outside of your work profile/secure folder/private space. By doing this, Custom Wear Notifications will be able to detect the apps and you’ll be able to create rules for them that will work even for notifications coming from the work profile/secure folder/private space.

FAQ

Why are the custom notifications not working?

If you’ve followed the instructions but the custom notifications are still not working for you, please follow the steps below:

1. Make sure that the custom notifications are enabled in the app for your watch. You can check this in the watch app as well.
2. Make sure you’ve allowed the app the permission to react to incoming notifications and you’ve disabled the battery optimizations for it.
3. Make sure that the volume for the custom notifications is not 0. If you’ve used the first method for muting the built-in notification sound, the volume for the custom notifications is the standard Notifications volume of the watch. Otherwise, if you’ve used the second method, you need to make sure that Media volume is not 0.
4. Make sure that the watch and the phone are not under Power Saving, Do Not Disturb, Mute, Vibrations Only, Theatre Mode, Low power mode, etc.
5. Make sure that the watch is connected to the phone through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and that the Custom Wear Notifications app is also installed on it.
6. If you’ve selected that you want to receive the custom notifications only when the phone is not in use, make sure that the phone screen is off.
7. If you’ve selected that you want to receive the custom notifications only when you wear the watch, make sure you wear the watch.
8. Make sure that the apps that you’ve received notifications from (that don’t trigger custom notifications on the watch) have a rule with a sound or vibration for them. If they don’t have a custom rule, they will use the Global Notifications rule, so make sure you’ve configured it in this case.
9. Make sure that the notifications you receive trigger a sound or vibration on the phone itself, because the notifications that are muted on the phone, will be muted on the watch as well (unless you use the Notify silent hours option for your custom rules).
10. Make sure the app is not installed in the work profile/secure folder/private space of your phone, as this might prevent the phone app from communicating with the watch.
11. Make sure that the silent hours are not active, if you configured them.
12. Make sure that both the mobile app and the watch app have the same version. If the versions are not the same, please update the apps.
13. Disable all types of battery optimizations on the watch app as well. To do this, go to watch settings -> Apps -> App list -> Custom Wear Notifications -> Permissions and disable Pause app activity if unused. After that, go to Battery and device care -> Battery -> Sleeping apps and remove the app from the list, if present.

Why is the custom ringtone not working?

If the custom ringtone is not working, despite reading the Watch ringtone rule section above, please follow the steps below:

1. Make sure that the custom notifications are enabled in the app for your watch. You can check this in the watch app as well.
2. Make sure you’ve allowed the phone state permission in the watch app.
3. Make sure that the ringtone volume on the watch is not 0. If you’ve used the first method for muting the built-in ringtone sound, the volume for the ringtone is the standard Ringtone volume of the watch. Otherwise, if you’ve used the second method, you need to make sure that Media volume is not 0.
4. Make sure that the watch and the phone are not under Power Saving, Do Not Disturb, Mute, Vibrations Only, Theatre Mode, Low power mode, etc.
5. Make sure that the watch is connected to the phone through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and the Custom Wear Notifications app is also installed on it.
6. On some watches it is required to wear the watch before the ringtone can play. This can be avoided by enabling the Use Media volume setting.
7. Make sure that the silent hours are not active, if you configured them.
8. Make sure that both the mobile app and the watch app have the same version. If the versions are not the same, please update the apps.
9. Disable all types of battery optimizations on the watch app as well. To do this, go to watch settings -> Apps -> App list -> Custom Wear Notifications -> Permissions and disable Pause app activity if unused. After that, go to Battery and device care -> Battery -> Sleeping apps and remove the app from the list, if present.

Why is my watch not detected?

If your watch is not detected by the app, please follow the steps below:

1. Make sure that the watch is connected to the phone through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.
2. Make sure you have the Custom Wear Notifications app installed on your watch.
3. Make sure your watch software is up-to-date.
4. Make sure your phone and watch have the Google Play Store installed and you’re connected with an account on both of them.
5. Depending on your watch manufacturer, you might need to download on the phone the official companion app of the watch or the official Wear OS app from the Google Play Store.

Why do I hear both the default watch sound and the custom one?

The application works by playing the custom sounds and vibrations that you configured, over the built-in notification sound and vibration of the watch.

Since hearing both sounds and vibrations is not a desired behavior, you need to mute the built-in notification sound and vibration of the watch, so that only the custom sounds and vibrations remain.

To do this, please check out the Mute the built-in notification sound and vibration section above.

I purchased the PRO Version in the past. How to restore it?

If you’ve purchased the app in the past and you are reinstalling it or installing it on a new device, the app will try to restore the PRO Version automatically. If it doesn’t, you can use the Restore Purchases option from the Info page.

In order for the restore to work, make sure you are connected to the internet, you are logged in on the Google Play Store with the same account you used when you purchased the PRO Version, and you’ve downloaded the app while being connected to that account.

You can also try to remove all your accounts connected to the Google Play Store, except for the account you used for purchasing the PRO Version, and check again if the restore is working.

I selected a custom sound or vibration that is too long. How can I stop it?

If you’ve selected by mistake a custom sound or you’ve created a custom vibration that is too long and you want to stop it on the watch after it has started playing, you can do this by dismissing the notification that triggered the custom sound or vibration, either on the phone, or on the watch.

You can also do this by turning off and then back on the custom notifications from either the phone or the watch app.

Another method is by killing the background service that the watch app is using to play the custom sound and vibration. For this, go to Recent apps on the watch and select to see the apps running in the background. Stop the app from there.

Can I set a custom sound and vibration for my SMS messages?

Yes! Just create a custom rule for the SMS app you are using. When you go to create the custom app rule, search under the System apps category. SMS apps are, in general, system apps.