How to use Facer for Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy smartwatches

If you own an Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy Watch or a Wear OS smartwatch and you love a good watch face, then you really should know about Facer.

It's a platform dedicated to freshening up your smartwatch with a dose of digital customization.

For those who fancy getting creative, there's also access to Facer's watch face creator tool that's available through its smartphone app, web app or Mac and Windows apps.

Whether you want to know how to get Facer watch faces onto your smartwatch or how to make your own, we break down how it all works below so you can start ramping up your face collection.

• Best Apple Watch faces
  
• Best Samsung Galaxy Watch faces

What smartwatches does Facer work with?

• All Samsung Galaxy watches
• All Wear OS smartwatches
• Apple Watch

Before we get into the nitty gritty of how to get those faces onto your smartwatch, we need to talk about the smartwatches you can actually get it working on.

Currently, Facer has phone apps in the Google Play Store, Apple App Store and now the Samsung Galaxy Apps store.

In terms of compatibility with the Apple Watch, it should work with all of the most widely available models including the Series 7, the Apple Watch SE and the Series 3.

For Wear OS smartwatches, it's a similar story and Facer lists the likes of the Asus ZenWatch, Moto 360, Tag Heuer Connected as well as Michael Kors and Fossil smartwatches as supported. Basically, if you have a Wear OS watch, you should be good.

On the Samsung front, Facer works with the Galaxy Watch 4 on Wear OS and older Tizen Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 and the Active 2 smartwatches.

The app is free to download across the board as well.

There's some payment elements, but we'll get into that further down.

How to get Facer watch faces on Apple Watch

We are going to start off with showing you on an Apple Watch to give you an idea of how getting a watch face onto your smartwatch works. We've also explained how it works on a Samsung Galaxy Watch below that. While the process won't be entirely the same across watch platforms, it's largely a familiar story for getting faces onto your watch.

1. Download the Facer app

Once you've download the app to your phone and selected your smartwatch, you'll be pushed into the storefront where you will only see watch faces compatible with the watch paired to your phone.

So for the Apple Watch, you'll be able to see categories like Apple Watch Series 3 faces, photo faces, minimal watch faces and a whole load more.

2. Find your perfect face

Once you've found a face that takes your fancy, you'll be able to see a profile of the app, which also shows a series of preview options. You can hit the play icon to see how animated watch faces work for instance, or see how it looks on different Apple Watch models/colors.

3. Send to Apple Watch

When you're happy to go with that face, tap the blue icon beside it to start sending it to your watch.

4. Create the watch face

On the Apple Watch, that will bring up the option to Create Watch Face. In some instances, there may be two versions of the face to choose from as well.

5. Edit complications

Tap on the one you want and then you'll also have the option to adjust colours, add photos, change positioning of time and add in complications.

6. Add your face to Apple Watch

Once you're happy, hit Add and it will land onto your smartwatch. That's it.

How to get Facer watch faces on Samsung Galaxy Watch 3

Whether you have a Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 or an Watch Active 2, the process should be similar. What might change things (or add a few extra steps) is when your smartwatch is paired with an Android phone. This is how we set things up on a Galaxy Watch Active 2 on a non-Samsung Android phone.

1. Download Facer from Google Play

Download the Facer Watch Faces phone app from the Google Play Store.

2. Get the smartwatch app:

Next, download the Facer Companion watch app from the Samsung Galaxy App Store, which will make it possible to sync faces over. If you have an Android phone, you'll should already have the Samsung Galaxy Wearable app downloaded to be able to access the Galaxy App Store.

3. Browse faces

Now go back to the Facer Watch Faces app on your phone. From here you can look for watch faces you want to add.

4. Send to watch

Once you find something you like, open the watch face page up and look for the same blue icon described in the Apple Watch setup. On your watch, you'll see the face will start syncing and then you should have your new face within seconds.

How to find a watch face on Facer

There is A LOT of faces here and there's a few ways to look through what's available. The first is to hit the Explore tab in the app and you'll be able to browse trending faces and the newest ones.

You can also use the search bar or search by categories like Futuristic, Elegant or Illustrated watch faces. If you want to keep a list, you can favourite faces as you search and expand them to see how they'll look.

There's also the charts where it will break down Premium Faces and Free Faces, which we'll get into next.

How much do Facer watch faces cost?

So there's a fair amount available to download for free, but there's also faces you will need to pay up for. To download and access those faces you'll need to sign up for Facer premium. That currently costs a year.

The premium subscription also ditches ads and it expands the amount of watch faces you can store in Facer's watchbox from 10 to 20. That's essentially a place that makes it easier to pick and choose from a selection of faces you like to switch between using.

In the case of the Apple Watch, there are some watch faces that include complications that you may now already have downloaded and may have to be purchased. You do not have to purchase these complications to make use of the watch face. You do also have the option to skip using that complication and stick the ones you already have access to.

How to make your own Facer watch face

If you want to have a go at making your own watch face, then that's something you can do directly from the phone app, using the web app studio or by downloading the Windows or Mac apps, if you prefer creating on a bigger screen.

Here's a breakdown of how to make a watch face from an iPhone for the Apple Watch:

1. Choose a template

First, choose a template for your watch. For Apple Watches, that includes an array of modular face templates. Currently, there's just one template that's free to use. You'll need to purchase additional templates, which are priced at per template.

2. Customize

The example included here is of the X-Large template on the Apple Watch. From here, you can select photos, complications, tools and or widgets you like to have nestling on your watch face. The more data rich faces are the ones you'll need to pay for.

if you opt to pay for the additional templates, you'll have access to include more complications or widgets to your watch face

3. Send to watch

Once you're done creating, you can hit that blue icon again to send to your watch. You can alternatively share the design or publish it to the Facer platform to make it available for other smartwatch owners to download.

For Samsung Galaxy Watch users, it doesn't appear you can do the same from the phone app right now, so you'll need to head online or download the Mac or Windows apps to get creative.