[Feature Request] Wear OS support

[Sanaki]

Right now Wear Codes (iap for more than one code), Pass2U, and Stocard seem to support Wear OS for loyalty cards. I don't particularly trust either free option and I'd rather not have to use them if possible when I'm already more than happy with this app. While I realize this may be somewhat unlikely, any form of Wear OS support would be very welcome.

[brarcher]

Looking this up, my understanding is that the app which runs on the phone is a separate, standalone app. Does this mean that the applications you mentioned actually have two separate apps, one for the phone and one for the watch?

[Sanaki]

In the case of Wear Codes and Pass2U Wallet, yes. Stocard doesn't appear to and instead likely implements a phone-delivered notification-style screen for the watch to use without having an actual app on the watch. I'll download it later today to check its implementation and report back. Either way though, Wear Codes is the only one of the three I believe isn't selling PII, so while I'll try out Stocard to see how it works, I won't be using it long-term.

Mind you, while the watch apps are technically standalone, in the case of things like this, they're generally extremely limited in functionality and only act as essentially receivers for the phone apps (and often won't function at all without the phone app installed and the phone connected). The better ones (not counting true standalone apps) will mirror the data on the phone for display purposes on the watch, but still usually won't allow modification of the data itself from the watch. Optimal implementation for this app would likely be along those lines. Clone the app's card database to the watch, display from there, but require actual changes and such take place in the phone app.

EDIT: Seems Stocard uses a wear os client app as well. All of them seem to function (approximately) as follows: Open app on watch with phone app installed, it displays a list of cards. Pick card, get barcode/QR code. Can swipe left/right to show the card ID or open it in the phone app. Literally no other functionality present at any stage.

Technically it should be possible to set up display on the watch via a watch notification, but that wouldn't really be optimal for functionality. It -might- be possible to enable a watch notification with control buttons to function as a pseudo-app, but I'm not really sure the effort to make that work would be any less than just making a Wear OS app. Either way, this is probably pretty low priority due to the amount of effort involved, but it'd be a nice feature if it's ever reasonable.

[Sanaki]

If this ever becomes a matter of interest, I'm more than willing to be a beta test monkey. I have two Wear OS devices available (Huawei Watch 2 Sport and Misfit Vapor) and have a reasonable dev environment. Unfortunately, my ability to help currently falls short of actually helping to write the watch app, or I'd be all over that.

[brarcher]

Reading more on the topic, I agree that the watch app is really a separate app. I do not have a watch myself, so although I could use a simulator to work on it, I could not guarantee I would not unintentionally break it later.

If someone were interested in creating a watch app that works with Loyalty Card Keychain, I would be up for assisting where I could, such as implementing any interfaces on the phone side which would be necessary.