Working with Screen Sizes

Android Wear devices can have either a rectangular or a round display, which can also be different sizes.

Identifying Screen Type

The Wear support library provides some controls that help you detect and adapt to different screen shapes, such as WatchViewStub and BoxInsetLayout.

Be aware that some of the other support library controls (such as GridViewPager) automatically detect screen shape themselves and shouldn't be added as children of the controls described below.

WatchViewStub

The main layout file contains a android.support.wearable.view.WatchViewStub which references different layouts for rectangular and round screens using the app:rectLayout and app:roundLayout attributes:

<android.support.wearable.view.WatchViewStub
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
  android:layout_width="match_parent"
  android:layout_height="match_parent"
  android:id="@+id/stub"
  app:rectLayout="@layout/rect_layout"
  app:roundLayout="@layout/round_layout" />

The solution contains different layouts for each style which will be selected at run-time:

BoxInsetLayout

Rather than build different layouts for each screen type, you can also create a single view that adapts to rectangular or round screens.

This Google example shows how to use the BoxInsetLayout to use the same layout on both rectangular and round screens.

Wear UI Designer

The Xamarin Android Designer supports both rectangular and round screens:

The design surface in rectangular style is shown here:

The design surface in round style is shown here:

Wear Simulator

The Google Emulator Manager contains device definitions for both screen types. You can create rectangular and round emulators to test your app.

The emulator will render like this for a rectangular screen:

It will render like this for a round screen:

Video

Fullscreen apps for Android Wear from developers.google.com.