A popular smartwatch customization platform for Android, Facer, has today made its way to iOS and Apple Watch. While there are already dozens of utilities on the App Store that allow users to better personalize their Apple Watch’s home screen, Facer stands out because of its sizable collection of free watchfaces, range of exclusive content, which also includes premium brands and its web-based watchface design tool.
You may already be familiar with Facer, thanks to its earlier support for Android smartwatches where it has been regularly listed as one of the top applications for watchface creation. That app has grown its community to hundreds of thousands of users, the company says. (Google Play data confirms this, showing the app has between 100,000 to 500,000 downloads.)
A month ago, the Android application received an update, which brought a lot more content to the platform beyond what was previously available, adding thousands more free watchfaces as well as officially licensed faces from brands like Garfield, Betty Boop and Popeye. Those faces and more are now available for Apple Watch, too.
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In addition, the Apple Watch application supports the ability to view the latest images from your Instagram or Tumblr feeds as your watchface. Other themes and channels are also available, including those from partners like Unsplash, Superfamous, Gratisography, Vecteezy, NASA and others.
Or, if you prefer something more educational, the app offers flashcard-style faces that with every flick of your wrist can help you learn the constellations, new languages or about the planets in our solar system.
What’s also interesting about the Facer platform versus a number of the watchface creation utilities available currently is that it offers a way to create and share your personalized watchfaces from the web. With a design tool at facer.io/creator, you can drag and drop onto an HD canvas text, shapes and images from its online library. However, you can do more customizations for Android watch faces, the company’s website notes, as Apple limits editing to wallpaper only.
The app is the latest launch from Little Labs, an NEA-backed startup that calls itself a “smartwatch-first” app studio. That is, instead of focusing on building out a suite of mobile applications for iOS and Android, Little Labs builds apps for smartwatches and wearables.
The company, founded by at team with backgrounds in mobile (including Jamdat Mobile and EA), last year raised $3 million from NEA, Lightspeed Ventures and Lowercase Capital, among others.
In addition to Facer, its lineup of apps includes a bite-sized slots game for Apple Watch as well as The Martian Game, built for the Oscar-nominated movie.
Facer is a free download on the iTunes App Store.