Unlike the Apple Watch, there are thousands of watch faces available to download for the Galaxy Watch. There are no restrictions, so anything goes.
While the Galaxy Watch comes pre-loaded with tons of watch faces, there are even more to choose from the Google Play Store and services such as Facer.
In true Wear OS style, the process is a little fiddly, and actually differs from depending on the watch face you choose. Read on for how to download faces.
1. Fire up Google Play
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Head to the Google Play Store on your Android phone.
2. Find watch faces
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The interface of Google Play is quite chaotic. On the apps tab choose Categories and then watch faces to find the full selection.
3. Find a watch face you like
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Browse through the watch faces and tap anything that catches your eye.
4. Press Install
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The watch face will then be installed. Wait a few seconds, and then press Open. You'll then get a preview of the watch face app on your smartphone, and there will be some permissions to agree to. After this, you'll see a message that the watch face has been installed on your smartwatch. Usually, you'll see this happen on the Galaxy Watch as well.
5. Find it on your Galaxy Watch
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Now head to the Galaxy Watch. Press and hold the watch face and slide across to Add. Now scroll all the way down until you get to Downloads, which is usually last on the list. You will see your watch face there.
Best Galaxy Watch faces to download
Facer
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The first one is a cheat – as it doesn't come from the Google Play watch face store. It's an Android app in itself. Download the Facer app from the Google Play Store, and then select the Facer watch face from the library on your Galaxy Watch. In the smartphone app, you can browse watch faces, including some cheeky Rolex, Breitling, or Tag Heuer-inspired options.
Something a little floral, the Flower watch face is elegant and stylish – more so than most of the options on the Google Play Store. It is free, but to use complications and other features, you'll need to pay for the premium version (£1.09).
This one does what it says on the tin, with a bit of an 80s vibe. You still get some information on the watch face, with the date, heart rate and step count. You can customize the color, dial, and complications.
This has a very cool, 80s, Vice City kind of vibe, and we love the typography of the digital dial. You can make some basic changes to the text size, but by and large, what you see is what you get. There's a premium tier, that enables you to add complications for $2.
An action-packed face full of data and complications, there's not much spare room left on X-Force. It's one for people who like as much information as possible – although you can turn elements off in the settings.
An animated option for Watch 5 / Watch 4 owners, this digital face fits in eight data fields, letting you see information like temperature, daily step count, and even phone and battery life along with the date and time.
It sounds like it's squeezing a lot in, but it actually does a very good job of giving you lots of data to glance at and still looks very slick. It also offers an always-on display mode, too.
If you want to add more of a Pixel Watch feel to your Samsung smartwatch, this is currently one of the best faces to do it.
You can display simple details like the time, date, and temperature, with a premium mode letting you add additional widgets to show off data like real-time heart rate and battery status.
If you like a more uncluttered face look and something that screams Wear OS, this is the one for you.
Offering a mix of analog and digital looks, this is another watch face that will let you glance at the time on one side while also keeping a close eye on step counts and things like the weather.
You can adjust colors, there are eight data fields and it works with Wear OS widgets, too, to make it one of our current favorites.
If you like your faces customizable, that's what this analog-style watch face promises.
You can stick to just showing off the time or add in custom complications, customize all parts of the watch face and it supports hidden complications when in ambient mode.
It has 'Simply' in the name, but it's far from a simple watch face to look at.
It crams in a lot and it shouldn't work, but it still manages to make checking in on the weather, step counts, battery life, or checking the date nice and easy to do.
You'll need to have a Facer Premium subscription to grab it, but it's one worth having in your watch face tray.
Apart from loving the name of this face, this Facer freebie displays the time in analog and digital looks and shows off battery status, daily step count progress, the weather, and real-time heart rate data.
It works in both always-on and dim watch modes and is a data-rich option that, crucially, looks the part, too.
If you're yearning for that Samsung phone feel on your smartwatch, this is what this watch face is all about.
It pulls in those familiar app icons that offer shortcuts to your most used features and frees up ample room to show off the time and date, and also discreetly shows off the current battery status.
It won't sap that watch battery and there's even an ambient mode to revert to a simpler watch face look, too.
KRT Modular
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A watch freebie from the Samsung Galaxy Store, this face spreads your data around the screen with a big spot saved for the time and supports four app shortcuts in total.
It can also display heart rate, battery status, and step counts. You can tinker with the main color here, too, but we are definite fans of the green-on-black case look on the Galaxy Watch 3.
My Day
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The My Day watch face made its debut on the first Samsung Galaxy Watch and we're glad to see it's stuck around for the newer Tizen watches, too.
As you might have already deduced, this one gives you a glanceable look at – drumroll, please – your day.
It syncs with your calendar to give you a tab for when you're getting close to events and clicking it pops open the details in a mini-screen.
Since this is a Samsung-own face, there's also room to customize.
If you hold down the face, you'll be given the option to change the style of the hands, as well as mute/unmute toggling for the ticking sound.
Weather center
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This is absolutely one of our favorite Samsung watch faces. Surprise, surprise, it's all about the weather displaying the chance of rain and uses small weather icons to display forecasts by the hour.
Best of all, the real-time weather conditions form the backdrop for the face.
So if it's cloudy, moving clouds appear or you'll see water droplets when it starts to pour with rain.
It's a bit of a battery hog, but if you can live with that, it's a great watch face addition to Samsung's collection.
Tomcat
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This is one that sticks out from our time with the first Galaxy Watch and one we enjoy rocking on the Active 2.
Found under the Classic category, Tomcat is an analog-style face that matches a black watch face with orange hands that offers a really nice, clean look.
There's room for three widgets to show off data like battery status, step counts, and the weather. It's one of the nicest analog faces that looks like the part on Samsung's smaller smartwatch.
Simplicity
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Another one for the Watch Active 2, this one used to be a paid-for watch face, so it's nice to see it's now free.
The black font on sky blue keeps things really simple showing off information like the date, time, step counts, and heart rate data.
It's not one you can customize yourself, but it does manage to cram in a lot of data when you accept to share your sensor data.
If you're looking for a digital face option and one that's a good match for the blue Active Watch 2, this is one of our faves.
Acentric
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The Galaxy Watch 3 is designed to be a dressier Samsung watch with its leather band and high-grade watch case. Samsung includes a range of analog faces and Acentric is the one that stands out for us.
It's a face that includes multiple sub-dials that can show off information like battery status and step counts a bit as you'd find on a hybrid smartwatch.
You also have the ability to customize those dials to display additional information like the weather, heart rate, and displaying time from another time zone.
Color Pie
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Sometimes the simplest watch faces are the best faces - and that's definitely how we feel about Color Pie.
Available for free in the Galaxy Store, it puts the time front and center with the second hand replaced with a moving line of color that changes hue every time it hits 12.
There's no room to customize, though that would ultimately defeat the purpose of what is an attractive, minimalist watch face option.
Friss 44 Core
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For Galaxy Watch 3 owners only, this is one that you need to see live to get a sense of its trippy look.
It's one of the top animated faces we've found, and, if you're worried about that animated look hitting the battery hard, there's also an eco mode that adjusts the look.
It'll still give you a big hit of additional data including steps and heart rate, of course, and will also support reminders to make sure you keep moving during the day.
Matveyan Digital watch
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This feels like a digital watch that shouldn't work, as it tries to cram in a lot around the edge of the screen, but it surprisingly stayed on our wrist for quite a while after first appearing.
The splash of color in the center gives it a nice, stylish look, and you can quickly access contacts, messages, and music features without jumping into the main app screen.
You can adjust the colors used, and there's also an always-on display mode if you want to stare at it 24/7.
Jibber Jab stripe face
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There are a lot of quite fun, cartoon-style watch faces available, and this is the one we've found that makes great use of that vibrant AMOLED display.
It's still easy to absorb your info at a glance, and you can adjust shortcuts by simply tapping on the screen.
You also have the option to adjust background colors if you fancy going for a darker one, and black and white looks great, too.
Szasz Cold
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This is a big, digital love-in that goes huge on stats you can view, while still making sure the time is front and center.
It finds room to show off the battery, step counts, calorie burn and heart rate, which all sit above and below the time.
There's also a very small floating ball that floats around the edge of the screen if you want a nicer way to count down the minutes.
You can't tinker with the font color, unfortunately, but we kind of like how that electric neon blue looks on the black watch face. If you do a search, you should be able to find it in more colors, too.
BoSSWatch Yin Yang
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Mixing an analog watch face with an LCD one, this face feels like a bit of a throwback to retro watches.
It nicely embraces that yin-yang design to show off the battery, heart rate, step counts, data, and time without making things feel too overcrowded.
It's a good example of a Samsung watch face that merges analog and digital looks in a really attractive way.
Fresh
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Fresh is a mash-up of analog and digital elements that come together that uses the heart rate icon as your second watch hand as it streams past widgets that display the date, step counts, elevation, and calorie burn.
The contrasting minute and hour hands also look great and it's one of the more stylish face options you can find in the Galaxy Store.
Fit future
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There are plenty of watch faces that put your fitness stats front and center, and this one that appears on the Watch Active 2 and the Watch 3 is one of the best at doing it.
The icons are nice and big, the color is great and it comfortably looks the part when displayed on both of Samsung's watches.
Step Challenge 2
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Samsung offers some of the most rewarding and motivating fitness features you can find on a smartwatch, and this watch face is designed to play nicely with one of those key features.
If you are planning to take on a fellow Samsung smartwatch owner in a challenge to see who can rack up the most steps, this face is able to display progress against your competition.
So you can quickly find out if you're comfortably ahead of the need to step up your step game.
Earth our home
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Another face that takes advantage of the live faces support on the Galaxy Watch 3, this simple face displays the time and our planet slowly spinning on its axis.
It's just a really lovely option to look at, and, also, there's also something quite calming about seeing the world spinning. This is another one to hunt out in the Galaxy Store.
Under the sea
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No, this isn't paying homage to Sebastian from The Little Mermaid. Instead, it's giving you that feeling of having a fish tank on your smartwatch.
Along with displaying the time, it can also show off battery status, daily step counts, and heart rate all while a trio of fish gently bob up and down on the display.
This is one you'll find swimming around in Samsung's Galaxy Store.
London's night
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Taking full advantage of one of the best smartwatch screens in the business, London's night drops that city skyline onto your watch face, while making room for additional widgets and of course the time up in the sky.
It's a really good example of how to fit in those data widgets without breaking up the great imagery used as the face's backdrop.
It's a slight shame you can't tinker with the colors, but we can deal with Big Ben and London Eye dressed up in pastel purple.
Surfing On Beach
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If you're looking for watch faces outside of the ones lurking inside Samsung's store, you'll find plenty of good ones from the Facer app, where you can also make your own faces, as well.
It's an app that's available for both Samsung and non-Samsung phones, too.
This surf-themed one offers great colors and does a really nice job of discreetly adding details like date, current heart rate, temperature, and step counts.
No.7
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Another one from the Facer watch face library, this one carries that round watch theme to section off your stats and leave plenty of space to show off the time as well.
The colors look great on the darker Galaxy Watch Active 2 case designs and it's easy to absorb information when you glance down at your wrist.
Michael Sawh has been covering the wearable tech industry since the very first Fitbit landed back in 2011. Previously the resident wearable tech expert at Trusted Reviews, he also marshaled the features section of T3.com.
He also regularly contributed to T3 magazine when they needed someone to talk about fitness trackers, running watches, headphones, tablets, and phones.
Michael writes for GQ, Wired, Coach Mag, Metro, MSN, BBC Focus, Stuff, TechRadar and has made several appearances on the BBC Travel Show to talk all things tech.
Michael is a lover of all things sports and fitness-tech related, clocking up over 15 marathons and has put in serious hours in the pool all in the name of testing every fitness wearable going. Expect to see him with a minimum of two wearables at any given time.
