Get New Watch Faces for my Google Pixel Watch 3?

Congrats on your shiny new Google Pixel Watch 3, it’s a very nice device and clearly one of the best smartwatch options for Android users! The device has a lot of different ways you can customize its functionality and appearance, so it’s definitely worth spending the time going through the Google tutorial and poking around in the companion “Watch” app on your Android phone.

In terms of watch faces, well, there are quite a few choices there too, including lots from designers and developers who have added their contributions to the Google Play Store. Most cost money, but the most expensive face I found was $0.99 USD so it’s not a major additional investment. 😉

Shortcuts: Customize Your Face | Choose a New Face | Buy A Third-Party Face

Even without paying for a third-party face, there are thousands of variations you can create for the dozens of faces already included by Google. Let’s have a look at how to customize the current face, choose a diferent face, and buy a new third-party face. For simplicity, I’m going to do everything within the app, but many of these tasks can also be done on-watch if you prefer a really tiny screen.

Tip: I just posted a detailed unboxing of the Google Pixel Watch 3 on my popular YouTube channel!

CUSTOMIZE PIXEL WATCH FACE

Before we jump into the app, tap and hold on the time display on your watch (once it’s woken up, so really, it’s a tap to wake, then tap and hold). Now you can swipe left or right to see what faces are already loaded onto the watch. This is an important concept because there are lots of watch faces in the Android app that aren’t on the phone: If you want to use one of them you need to load it onto the watch. This also means you occasionally should delete unused faces, another task doable within the Android app.

I’m going to fire up the “Watch” app and you can immediately see what face I have set:

I prefer simplicity with my smartwatch faces, so this one’s great. There are two main areas you can customize here: the face and the “Tiles” (the screens you reach with a left or right swipe on the watch). Let’s focus on faces, so tap on “Watch faces“.

Notice just on the left and right edges are other watch faces already saved on the watch itself: swiping left and right will let me customize those as desired, but in this instance, I want to edit the face that’s already set as my watch display. Easy enough, tap on “Edit“.

Different faces have different levels of customizability (is that a word? 🙂 ) but “Analog Bold” gives you plenty of customization, as you can see. I’m going to change the color to a dark blue, which is in fact my favorite color, but otherwise I like the appearance, so that’s it. Once I choose a new color, a tap on “Save” saves it in the app and loads it onto the watch itself. Easy!

CHOOSING A NEW WATCH FACE

In the Android Watch app, you can also tap on the green “Add Watch Face” button to see the entire gallery of designs from Google:

There are a lot, but many are variations on a theme, with the same basic design but different “complications” (the name watch folk use to describe the smaller widgets on a watch face). Notice the top row, for example: Different colors, slightly different font sizes, different items on the edges, but fundamentally the same design. Remember if you like a layout but not a color, that’s easily changed!

Swipe to the bottom to see all the many, many options. I already mentioned I like simple watch faces, right? So it won’t be a surprise when I find myself drawn to the last entry:

Yes, I like Vista. Time and nothing else. A tap on one of the designs shows me the surprisingly few options for this particular watch face for the Google Pixel Watch 3:

The three scenes from which you can choose are Desert, Meadow, and Ocean. I like Ocean so am going to tap on “Save” to set it as my watch face and save it as my preference both.

Be alert to tiny windows, because this will pop up at the bottom of the screen for just a few seconds:

that’s how you know it worked!

No surprise, the new face now shows up in the lineup of installed watch faces:

Not too difficult at all, really. But… what about buying a commercial watch face?

HOW TO BUY A PIXEL WATCH FACE

For reasons I cannot explain, the link labeled “Explore more watch faces that suit your style” doesn’t work for me in the Watches app. Not to worry, it’s easy to launch the Google Play Store app and search for “pixel watch face”. There are quite a few…

I’ve been wearing watches since the very beginning of the digital watch era (who knew that a watch that could time events would someday evolve into a fully functional computer on your wrist?) so here’s the third-party Pixel Watch face that caught my eye: “Retro watch face“…

It isn’t free, but I think my budget can handle a $0.99 expenditure, so I’m going to tap on the blue bar with the price listed. It requires confirmation of identity, as you would hope before a purchase, and within a few seconds here’s what I see:

Tap on “Open” and your Android device will show a splash screen. Tap on that and watch your Google Pixel Watch 3 because it’ll update! Here’s what the new face looks like on my wrist:

That’s quite pleasing and one I’ll keep. If you don’t like it but want to keep it around for alter use, just tap and hold to pick a different face on your watch. Really don’t like it? Go back into Google Play and request a refund. Either way, you now know all the main ways to choose and customize the faces on your Pixel 3 watch.

Pro Tip: I have quite a few Apple Watch tutorials here on my site too. Please check out my Smartwatch Help Library for lots of useful content in this regard!