Facer officially returns to the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 in massive update

What you need to know

• The Facer app has become fully compatible with Wear OS 6 as of July 24.
• The update adds Watch Face Format faces with better battery efficiency and ambient AOD modes.
• Facer's "Rosetta Stone" dev tool allows creators to make a single watch face compatible with WFF and Apple Watches.
• The app is adding a social Looks section for users to show off custom watch styles.

Watch face apps like Facer have been locked off of Wear OS watches for some time, but with the launch of the Galaxy Watch 8 and Watch 8 Classic running Wear OS 6, new owners will finally be able to install custom watch faces again.

We learned at Google I/O in May that Wear OS 6 would enable third-party watch face apps, so that you could find them through dedicated storefronts intead of the Play Store individually.

Now, Facer has updated its app with full Wear OS 6 compatibility. If you select the Watch 8 as your device, you'll see WFF-compatible faces you can sync directly to your watch, all compliant with Google's rules about battery efficiency.

Each Facer watch face has a "Power Impact" rating in the description — Minimal, Low, Medium, or High — predicting how much of an effect it'll have on your smartwatch's battery life, based on factors like "power draw of pixels in ambient mode."

Most of Facer's current compatible WFF faces are paid or premium, and it's still fairly limited compared to the hundreds of thousands of faces available for older Wear OS watches.

However, Facer Creator tool now integrates WFF into its "Rosetta Stone" system, so that any watch face made is compatible with Wear OS watches, Apple Watches, and other formats. So we expect to see a wider variety of options soon.

For now, most of the available options come from well-known brands: Fallout, Star Trek, Barbie, TMNT, Smurfs, Garfield, D&D, Tetris, Call of Duty, NASA, Hot Wheels, and many other popular franchises.

Only a few non-branded WFF faces are free, but Facer is offering a "limited-time launch promo" for this Wear OS 6 update, so new Premium members can pay $14.99 for their first year or $2.99/month.

Facer is also introducing "Looks" onto its app; it's a social area where people can post photos of their watches with their favorite faces and customizations.

We're excited that Facer has brought back custom WFF options to new Galaxy Watches, and will support new Wear OS 6 watches like the Pixel Watch 4 down the line. Even though Samsung won our Wear OS watch face battle for the classiest and most varied faces, it's nice to have more options.

We'll also have to watch out for other watch face apps like WatchMaker, TIMEFLIK, Pujie, and Recreative, Google's other partners confirmed to have Wear OS 6 compatibility in the works.