Project Issue: Initial Release of Wear OS Watch App ⌚️

[mchowning]

Update

We have moved to using a project board for tracking work on our watch app. Please refer to that instead of this issue going forward.

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For the initial release, we will focus on the watch app functioning independently of the phone. The ability to control Pocket Casts on the phone will be added afterwards (if we have time, some minimal control of the phone app may be added to the initial release).

This is not a final list of tasks. Additional items will be added as they come up.

🙏 Please leave a comment if you want to work on something. The task descriptions below are intentionally pretty minimal. If you want to work on something, I can give more information about the task (plans for the feature, UI designs, etc.) and help make sure we don't have two people working on the same thing.

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🔨	Work in progress
❗	High priority task
🤸	Stretch goal—would be nice to have in the initial release, but not a blocker
❔	Unknown priority—not sure when we'll get to this

Core functionality

• Enable notifications (Set up notification channels on watch #855)
• Add pager with 3 pages: Lists/Settings - Now Playing - Up Next queue (Add pager to watch app #908)
• Make sure that we are automatically syncing back to the servers from the watch (Add background syncing to watch app #1008

Now Playing

• Update background based on the currently playing podcast (Update player background and add volume button #980)
• Effects options (Add effects options to watch app #982)
• Volume/Source options (Update player background and add volume button #980)

Authentication

• Automatically sign in if signed into Pocket Casts on a paired phone (Sending refresh token from phone to watch #801)
• Google sign in (Add/google sign in to watch #959)
  • Do not automatically select previously signed-in google accounts (issue, pr).
• 🤸 Sign in with custom code authentication

🔨Podcasts screen

• Update UI (Improving the Wear OS podcasts page #992)
• 🤸Add search functionality

🔨Podcast screen

• Update UI (Improve watch app podcast screen UI #989)

Episode screen

• Initial implementation (Add episode screen and associated functionality to watch app #821)
• Add expandable show notes section (Add expandable show notes to watch episode screen #871)
  • 🤸 Update show notes to use "Read more" chip
• Update UI for add-next/add-last screen (add heading, make scrollable) (Add header to add to up next screen on watch #872)
• Handle user file episodes
• Open Now Playing screen when tapping on episode screen's Play icon (comment) (Open watch app's Now Playing screen when tapping on episode screen's Play icon #990)
• 🤸 Update episode navigation so there is only a single episode in the backstack at any point in time (comment)

Settings screen

• Initial implementation (Add watch settings screen with metered data warning #860)
• Login/logout
  • Implement UI within settings screen (Add watch settings screen with metered data warning #860)
  • Replace current placeholder UI for email sign in with with real (but basic) UI (this will be removed once enough alternative sign in methods are available) (Update UI for email sign in on watch #981)
  • 🤸 Confirmation before signout
  • 🤸 Add some kind of animation spinner to the logging in screen when an image is shown so the user knows something is happening if the refresh can take a really long time on long accounts (need to do some testing here).
• Download
  • Warn before using data (Add watch settings screen with metered data warning #860)
  • 🤸 Download using LTE or wait for wifi

Downloads/Network

• Enable download functionality (Add episode screen and associated functionality to watch app #821)
• Downloading and making large network requests using wifi instead of Bluetooth when possible (see horologist's network-awareness library). (Prefer faster networks for downloads on watch #881)
  • 🤸 Probably also make sure we're preferring wifi for syncing because that can be very slow for power users.
• ❗When there is not a network connection, check handling when a user tries to play a podcast that is not downloaded
• Initial screen implementation (Implement watch downloads screen #854)
• Add icons for queued and in progress downloads to EpisodeChip (Update watch's Up Next UI #909, Add up next icon to episode chip #914, Hide up next icons on up next screen #920)

Other

• Limit to Plus users since v1 will not include any functionality for controlling playback on the phone. (Restrict independent watch functionality to Plus users #994)
• Update release pipeline to build/release wear app to Google Play (Add wear app to build pipeline #996)
• Tracks (basic tracks added)
• Update horologist to bring in fixes like Improve StandardToggleChip to handle largest font scale google/horologist#1286 - (Bump horologist #991) (Handle large font sizes in watch app #995)
• Do some thorough testing of the app when there is no connection available (Test app when there is no connection available #1026)
• Do some thorough testing of the app when there is only an LTE connection available (Test Watch performance when only on a cellular network #1004)
• Check battery usage when streaming (according to Google this is an area of concern with watch apps) (Test Watch App's battery usage when streaming #1005)
• Splash screen
• 🤸 Test with Wear OS 4 preview emulator
• 🤸TalkBack/ and Accessibility (Handle large font sizes in watch app #995)
• 🤸 ?Use apply plugin: 'com.google.android.gms.oss-licenses-plugin' in wear/build.gradle?
• Add validation to email/password in wear app #983

Fixes

• ❗ Address performance issues (slow load, slow scrolling)
  • Scrolling feels sluggish on a Galaxy 4 (it's better on newer watches). Youtube Music, for example, feels much more fluid (maybe this is a compose issue and Youtube Music is using Views still 🤔 ). Let's look into whether we want to try and make the scrolling more-responsive/faster if fixing the performance issues doesn't resolve this.
• When logging out of a (google-connected?) account, the app sometimes crashes. (Avoiding crashing on RxJava errors in production #971 avoids the issue on release builds)
• Default media notification on Galaxy Watch 4 is not getting reflecting the playback state when playing from the PC watch app (Fix wear media notifications #1064)
• 🤸 When logging into the app using email, the Now Playing chip sometimes doesn't seem to get its colorful background the first time it is displayed.

Files

• Initial screen implementation

🤸 Folders

• Initial screen implementation

🤸 Filters screen

• Initial screen implementation

🤸 Control PC Phone App from Watch

• Now Playing screen

🤸 Tile?

[mchowning]

We have moved to using a project board for tracking work on our watch app. Please refer to that instead of this issue going forward.