Test on the Wear OS emulator

The Android Emulator lets you test your Wear OS applications on virtual devices. Much of its functionality is covered in the main Android Emulator documentation; this page focuses on features, testing capabilities, and troubleshooting tips specific to Wear OS development.

For basic setup instructions, see Create and run an app on Wear OS.

Wear OS testing capabilities

The emulator provides specialized tools for testing Wear OS features.

Test Bluetooth audio

See Test Bluetooth audio on emulators.

Simulate sensors

The emulator provides different ways to simulate sensor data from the toolbar, depending on the type of data.

Android Studio toolbar icons
Figure 1.: Android Studio's "Running Devices" toolbar.
  • Health Services data:
    • Access the dedicated Health Services panel directly from the emulator toolbar (look for the heart icon "heart icon"). This panel allows fine-grained control for simulating data specific to Health Services, like exercise metrics. For detailed instructions, see Simulate sensor data with Health Services.
  • Other sensors (such as location, pose, heart rate):
    • For other sensor types, open the Extended Controls window by clicking the overflow button (...) in the emulator toolbar.
    • Location: Navigate to Extended Controls > Location to provide single GPS points or simulate routes. This is useful for testing apps with the Fused Location Provider API and verifying approximate location handling.
    • Device Pose (Accelerometer & Gyroscope): Navigate to Extended Controls > Virtual Sensors > Device Pose. Adjust Rotation (X-Rot, Y-Rot, Z-Rot) and Movement (X, Y, Z) sliders to test motion-based interactions.
    • Heart Rate & Additional Sensors: Navigate to Extended Controls > Virtual Sensors > Additional Sensors. Simulate Heart rate and other sensors like Ambient temperature, Magnetic field, Proximity, Light, Pressure, and Relative Humidity.

Simulate watch inputs

  • Touch and Gestures: Standard mouse interaction mimics touch.

  • Physical Buttons (including rotating side button and bezel):

    • Buttons at the top of the emulator panel can be used to simulate hardware buttons (Button 1 "button 1 icon", Button 2 "button 2 icon") as well as other physical interactions such as palming ! "palm icon" tilting the device and swiping back

    • For Rotary input, open the emulator toolbar's overflow menu (...), and select Rotary input.

Pair devices

The emulator supports pairing with physical or virtual phones. Use the Wear OS emulator pairing assistant in Android Studio's Device Manager for a guided setup. See Connect a watch to a phone for details.

Important considerations

Note the following key technical and performance considerations when testing.

64-bit architecture only (recent images)

Emulator system images for Wear OS 4 (API 33) and higher only support 64-bit architectures (x86-64, arm64-v8a).

Performance differences

Emulator performance, especially regarding battery consumption and rendering speed, may differ significantly from physical devices. Always test on real hardware for final performance validation and battery optimization.

Known issues

This section lists common issues specific to the Wear OS emulator. For general emulator problems, see the main Troubleshoot known issues with Android Emulator page.

  • Wrist Tilt Sensor Warnings: You might see repeated log messages like the host has not provided value yet for sensorHandle=16. These can be ignored.
  • Tiles Renderer: DashedArcLine objects, as well as elements constructed by circularProgressIndicator(), might not render correctly on the API 36 emulator.