Beta — not a finished release.
Highlights
Browse your music library from the watch. A new "Browse library" action opens the playing app's own library — artists, albums, playlists — and walks it one level at a time. Until now the watch could only control what was already playing or replay something you had saved or searched for; it could not start something new.
"Nothing playing" is no longer a dead end. The idle screen gets a main button you choose — resume the last app, playlist shortcuts, the action menu, search, or recently played — and it now shows your "No playback" mini buttons, which is exactly where the shortcuts meant to start something live.
The app stops disappearing when you pause. Pausing used to tear the watch service down half a minute later, taking the ongoing-activity chip with it. A paused track now holds for 30 minutes by default, configurable.
Clock and title text are yours now. The clock gets its own typeface, weight, italic, size and letter spacing; the title gets a colour treatment. Both default to exactly what each face already draws, so nothing changes until you pick something.
Two new faces — Depth (Archived) and Carousel — plus Frosted edges artwork and two new panel backdrops.
Fixed, among others
- Five colour treatments from 3.1-beta1 were impossible to select in every language but English, and 21 artwork styles were mislabelled — the translated option lists had fallen behind and are paired with their values by position.
- The mini-button row's position followed you between faces while every other mini-button setting was remembered per face.
- Carousel: long titles now wrap inside the round screen instead of being cut off at both ends; the artist line and the app icon finally obey their own settings.
- Queue, menu and quick-panel covers scale with the row instead of floating as a small thumbnail in a large pill.
- Seeking from the edge no longer opens the volume overlay on touch-bezel watches.
See CHANGELOG.md for the full list.
Install
Sideload both APKs — they share a signing key and package name, and the watch will not connect if only one is updated. Install mobile-release.apk on the phone; push wear-release.apk to the watch from Settings → Updates → Update watch, or install it manually with Wear Installer.