06

CipherWear

Put CipherWear on a Wear OS watch, make it home, and turn on notifications.

CipherWear is the CipherOS home surface for Wear OS. It installs on a normal watch without root. See the CipherWear page for what you are installing.

1. Turn on developer options

  1. On the watch, open Settings, then System, then About.
  2. Scroll to Build number and tap it seven times. The watch confirms you are a developer.
  3. Go back to Settings, then Developer options, and turn on ADB debugging.
  4. Turn on Wireless debugging in the same screen, and open it to see the address and port.

2. Connect to the watch

Wear OS pairs over Wi-Fi rather than a cable. The Wireless debugging screen shows a pairing code and a port.

shell
adb pair 192.168.1.50:37123
Pair once, using the port shown under Pair new device

Enter the six digit code the watch shows. Then connect, using the other port, the one on the main Wireless debugging screen.

shell
adb connect 192.168.1.50:5555
adb devices
Check the watch appears

3. Install CipherWear

Download the APK from releases, then install it from the folder you saved it in.

shell
adb install -r cipherwear.apk
The -r flag upgrades in place if it is already installed

4. Make it your home

Open CipherWear from the app list. On first run it offers to become your home app. Accept, and pressing the watch's home control brings you here.

Changed your mind later, either way? Default home app in CipherWear's own settings asks again whenever you want.

5. Turn on notifications

Notifications need an access grant that Android will not let an app give itself. Open the notifications panel by swiping left: it tells you what is missing and offers a button that opens the right screen.

Some Wear builds do not ship that screen. If yours does not, grant it from the paired phone, or run this once:

shell
adb shell cmd notification allow_listener com.cipheros.wear/com.cipheros.wear.notifications.NotificationRelay
Grants notification access, which also enables the media card

Using your own wallpaper

Wallpaper image in settings opens a picker on watches that have one. Where the watch has no picker, that row prints the exact path to push a square PNG to. Turning Ambient wallpaper off returns to true black, which an OLED panel prefers.

Undoing it

Nothing here is permanent. Remove the app and the watch goes back to how it was.

shell
adb uninstall com.cipheros.wear

Known limits

  • Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and airplane tiles open the system screen that owns the setting rather than toggling it. Android stopped letting ordinary apps flip those years ago, at any permission level. Do Not Disturb is a real toggle.
  • Quick settings is CipherWear's own rather than Wear's. A third-party home app does not get the system one, so this is a replacement for it.
  • The media card only exists when something is playing, and rides on the same notification grant.