Android Wear watchface StatusBarGravity Bottom not respected

Question

I'm making a watchface for Android Wear. I would like to position the status bar at the bottom instead of at the top.

The documentation states to use the setStatusBarGravity()-method of WatchFaceStyle.Builder: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/wearable/watchface/WatchFaceStyle.Builder.html#setStatusBarGravity(int)

However, this does not seem to work as intended. Whenever I use Gravity.BOTTOM, the icons are centered vertically inside the watchface instead of positioned at the bottom.

This is the code I use:

setWatchFaceStyle(new WatchFaceStyle.Builder(Watchface.this)
                .setShowUnreadCountIndicator(true)
                .setStatusBarGravity(Gravity.CENTER_HORIZONTAL | Gravity.BOTTOM)
                .setAcceptsTapEvents(true)
                .build());

Which results in this (notice the charging indicator in the middle)

What am I doing wrong? I have googled and SO'd, but couldn't find any relevant information.

See also this related discussion: https://stackoverflow.com/a/35003591/154306 — Paul Lammertsma, Jan 29 '19 at 16:27

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 29 '19 at 16:25

2

What you're seeing, I'm afraid, is the Gravity.BOTTOM position. The placement of status bar icons is very generic, and the bottom alignment is just slightly below the actual vertical center, whereas Gravity.CENTER_VERTICAL is roughly one third of the screen.

Here's a breakdown of the placement of the icons for the three gravity values:

Bear in mind that circular screens do not respect the horizontal gravity value.

I know this is frustrating, but this is the way it is, I'm afraid. I'd suggest filing an issue at b.android.com to have this behavior changed.

answered Jan 29 '19 at 16:25

Paul Lammertsma

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Incidentally, I believe this behavior is a remnant of the now obsolete peeking notifications from Android Wear 1.0. Originally, watch faces could allow notification cards to peek from the bottom of the screen. The system icons could as a result not be aligned to the bottom of the screen. Now that [`setAmbientPeekMode()`](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/wearable/watchface/WatchFaceStyle.Builder#setambientpeekmode) has been removed, I'm hoping the icon positions can be controlled with more granularity soon. – Paul Lammertsma Jan 30 '19 at 13:23

score -2 · Answer 2 · answered May 23 '17 at 12:12

-2

Make sure that there are no spaces between the vertical bar separator and the Gravity constants because that will be perceived by the compiler as multiple parameters rather than one single “unified” Gravity concatenation parameter.

See "Building Your Watch Face: Using .setWatchFaceStyle()" in this documentation for more information.

answered May 23 '17 at 12:12

Teyam

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That's something I've never heard before. The pipe character is just a bitwise OR, which combines the Gravity constants into one integer, right? Anyways, I tried it, and it didn't work. Which is what I expected because I also tried Gravity.BOTTOM without Gravity.CENTER_HORIZONTAL. Thank you for the input, though! Any help is appreciated. – Mavamaarten May 24 '17 at 12:52

Android Wear watchface StatusBarGravity Bottom not respected

2 Answers2