WearMouse — Wear OS Air Mouse

GinKage

About this app

This app allows you to use your Wear OS watch to remotely control almost any desktop, laptop, Android TV device, as long as it has a Bluetooth radio, without installing any additional software.
You can, for example, move the mouse pointer simply by waving your hand, or click though the slides of a presentation by tapping the sides of your watch screen.

It is compatible with any Windows, OSX, Linux (including Raspbian), Chrome OS, Android (including Android TV) device, as long as it has a Bluetooth radio; no root, no “server” software required. Just launch the app, perform Bluetooth pairing (or just use it with your phone, since it's already paired), and then you can:
- Use it as an intuitive pointer for presentations (and also click through the slides using - cursor keys);
- Play games by waving your arms;
- Control a media player from the sofa (e.g. when using a computer connected via HDMI);
- Use it as a VR controller in some Cardboard games to walk around (not for Daydream though, since it has its own controller);
- Impress your friends with some telekinetic powers;
- Control your phone connected to a TV;

How to use it:
The app features four input modes: air mouse, touchpad, cursor keys and keyboard input.
* The air mouse mode is pretty straightforward. It has two on-screen buttons for left and right click, a top drawer to adjust motion tracking for the way you’re wearing your watch (on your left wrist, on your right wrist, or holding it in your hand like a laser pointer), and a bottom drawer for some extra functions: click and hold and middle click. If your watch is equipped with a rotating crown, you can use it for scrolling as well.
* Touchpad mode supports all common gestures you'd expect: swipe to move cursor, tap to click, double-tap, tap-and-hold to click and drag, two-fingers tap for right click, two-fingers swipe to scroll. To exit this mode, palm your screen or press the secondary button on your watch (if you have one).
* The cursor keys mode is simple enough: tap on the sides of the screen to trigger corresponding keys, double-tap in the center to trigger the Enter key, long-press to quit, and there are also swipe gestures for Escape, Backspace, Space and Tab keys.
* Keyboard input mode allows using either an on-screen keyboard, or voice input. Note that the text you’ll see entered on your connected device depends on your keyboard layout. Only US English is supported at the moment.
* If your watch has some extra keys, you can use those to quickly switch between the input modes.

There are also some settings available. You can choose to stabilize the pointer movements (this will smooth out smaller motions like hands shaking), enable diagonal movements for the cursor keys (which is useful for those Cardboard games), or reduce the data rate (which is helpful when you use the app with some older Nougat-based Android TV box, and the mouse pointer just can’t keep up). You can also choose if you want to keep the watch connected when you minimize it (off by default).

Troubleshooting:
* If you connect and see that the mouse pointer is moving once per second in a really janky way, try turning Airplane mode on your watch on and off, and then reconnect. Looks like there is some occasional issue with power management in the Bluetooth stack…
If you want to adjust the “sensitivity”, please look for the pointer speed setting on the connected device, not in the app itself.
* If you are using the app with a device that is connected to a TV, you’ll probably want to switch your TV to the “Game” picture mode. This should turn off any post-processing that may cause a lot of lag on modern TVs.
* I also recommend turning off wrist gestures in your watch’s settings when you use the air mouse mode, otherwise there’s a high chance of triggering the “back” or “go home” gesture.

The source code for this app is available at:
https://github.com/ginkage/wearmouse

Ratings and reviews

Cool app to make watch more smart. Air mouse is cool, but touchpad mode is more easy and useful for me. Was tricky to pair to windows - had to disable bluetooth on the phone before pairing. (And wearmouse should be launched on the watch ). I also think that the app could be also updated to be used as a camera remote shutter - to my knowing these remotes are just bluetooth keyboards that send media buttons keystrokes, therefore almost all functionality is already implemented. Thanks, author.

Pretty slick demonstration of what potential Wear OS has. I haven't found a use for me yet, but it could happen. I only wish it had Bluetooth media controls as another of its input options. There still seems to be no app that allows one to control the media player on an Android device, other than the one Wear-connected device. I have an Android media player that is NOT my main phone, and so I cannot control it with the watch's built-in media controller.

this is an interesting app and I'm enjoying it. If people had large monitors or wanted more efficient control I guess having some acceleration for mouse input could be added. You see this with Logitech's game mouse software. It's not necessary but it could beat inch worming your way across the screen

What's new

Compatibility fixes: splash screen, rotary input