If you use xDrip+ on your phone to display your CGM, and you want to have it appear on your Wear OS (formerly Android Wear) watch, it used to be that you could pull the app onto the phone through Play Store but, alas, this is no longer supported. Here is my workaround so you can still see your glucose levels on the watch.

Finding Out the Hard Way xDrip+ is no Longer Supported

For a while I had a warning on my watch telling me to update xDrip+ and the watch face kept resetting so I thought I would bite the bullet and update it. Finding no easy way to do this, I went to Google which suggested uninstalling and reinstalling the app. Uninstalling was no problem but reinstalling proved impossible.

To get xDrip+ onto my TicWatch originally, I went to the Play Store on the watch and I installed it from there. However, this time it simply was not available. A bit more Googling revealed you can no longer install xDrip+ onto the watch via Play Store (presumably because it is sideloaded with an apk file from Github, rather than installed through the Google Store).

My Workaround

Some more Googling revealed that a workaround can be achieved with Wearable Widgets. This is an Android app which installs on your phone and broadcasts Widgets (the little graphical icon which you can put on your phone) to your watch as a Watch Face.

Once you have installed Wearable Widget, the first thing you do is add the xDrip+ widget to the screen. One widget is free but, if you want to display more, payment is needed.

Then on the watch, go to the Play Store and search for Wearable Widgets to install it. Sure enough the Wearable Widget Watch Face is now available to show the xDrip+ widget.