Pulse Hybrid Analog Watch Face

BasilBase

About this app

Pulse is a hybrid watch face. Two hands sweep a railroad minute track, and the same hour is printed in the middle of the dial - so you can read the time at a glance or read it to the minute, without choosing between the two.

FOUR COMPLICATIONS, AND ALL FOUR ARE YOURS

There are four complications, one in each quarter of the dial, each with its own curved gauge on the rim, which fills whenever that corner holds a ranged value. Press and hold the dial, open Customize, and point every one of them at whatever you want it to show.

All four accept the same things:
- a short text reading
- a ranged value, drawn as a number with its own arc filling behind it
- an app's monochrome icon, or its own small image
- or nothing at all, if you would rather that corner stayed clear

They arrive filled. Before you change anything, the four come up on the watch's own sources - the battery top left, your steps top right, the weather bottom left and your heart rate bottom right - so there is nothing to install and no account to make. Battery and steps arrive as ranged values, so each draws its arc as well as its number, and the weather corner falls back to the date on a watch that supplies no weather of its own.

TWO APP SHORTCUTS

At nine and three there are two more slots, and these take a picture rather than a reading. Put an app in each and the dial becomes a way into them: one tap, from the watch face, with no launcher to scroll.

SIX DIALS, FIVE METALS

The dial is one of six: Bronze, Indigo, Slate, Oxblood, Forest and Charcoal, and Bronze is the one it comes up on. The metal is one of five: Pulse, Gold, Steel, Rose gold and Copper. The metal is not only the hands - it is the applied numerals, the index track and the digital hour together, so changing it changes the character of the whole face.

That is thirty combinations, and every one of them was measured for contrast before it shipped.

TWELVE OR TWENTY-FOUR, SET ON THE FACE

The hour format is chosen here rather than inherited from the phone: leave it on the device setting, or pin it to 24 hour, or to 12 hour with a small AM or PM under the digits. A watch set to 24 hour can still wear a 12 hour dial.

A CLEAN DIAL, ON ONE SWITCH

One choice in Customize clears all four readings away and leaves the hands, the numerals and the minute track. Nothing is lost - switch it back and your four complications return exactly as you set them.

THE SECONDS HAND IS OPTIONAL

It sweeps rather than ticks, and it can be hidden altogether if you would rather the dial were still.

ALWAYS-ON

The ambient screen keeps the twelve marks and the two hands and drops everything else - the readings, the shortcuts and the colour. Measured at 2.6 percent of the display lit.

WHAT IT DOES NOT DO

The face asks for no permissions of its own: not location, not body sensors. It works nothing out for itself either - the temperature in the corner comes from the watch's own weather complication, not from a weather engine inside the face - and a complication you assign may of course ask for its own permission. There is no companion phone app, no account, no ads and no subscription. One purchase, and that is the end of it.

GETTING IT ONTO THE WATCH

Buy it on the phone, then open the Play Store on the watch, where it will be waiting in your library. Press and hold the current face, swipe to Pulse, and tap Customize to set the dial, the metal, the hour format and your four complications.

If you have a question, or something is not working right, please write to us at [e-mail].

What’s new

First release.

A hybrid dial: two hands on a railroad minute track, with the same hour printed digitally in the middle.

Four complications, one to a quarter - battery, steps, weather and heart rate to start, all yours to reassign. Two app shortcuts at nine and three.

Six dials by five metals - thirty combinations, every pair measured for contrast. Twelve or twenty-four hour set on the watch, a seconds hand you can hide, and one switch that clears the dial. Always-on at 2.6 percent lit.