Watching and Listening on the Watch - Players and Viewers

Open a photo and the image viewer shows you the picture alone, nothing else. Tap the left or right third of the screen to page to the previous or next picture; tap the middle to bring the controls up. Left alone, they hide themselves again after fifteen seconds. A picture that fills the screen, rather than fitting it whole, can be pinched to zoom and dragged around.

Turning the crown or the rotary bezel does the same job as pinching, in steps: each notch zooms in or out a little further, up to four times the picture's normal size, with a small haptic tick at every step. Turn it back down to normal size and the picture recentres itself.

A command on the same screen switches between fitting the whole picture in the frame and filling the screen edge to edge; whichever you pick is remembered and comes back the next time you open a picture.

A Play-shaped command on the viewer starts a slideshow right there, showing the next picture at once rather than waiting out a countdown; the same command stops a show that's already running, and turning the slideshow setting off anywhere also stops one that's open on screen.

The scale mode you just read about sits as its own button on the control row instead of hiding behind a second more button - and that is the rule behind every player's menu on the watch: whatever already has a button on the row is never repeated inside the menu. The image viewer's menu opens on Back and closes again with a tap anywhere past the buttons.

In the video player, turning the crown or bezel changes the media volume, not the playback position, matching how the audio player and the platform itself treat a rotary input - and the current level is drawn right in the control panel while it is visible, so you are never adjusting it blind; turning the bezel brings the panel up if it was hidden. Seeking moved to a long press on the Previous and Next buttons instead, and both stay on screen even for a single file or a live stream, so seeking is always reachable. TalkBack announces each long press by its own name.

Leave the player and come back, or restart the app entirely, and the frame mode you last chose - fit or crop-and-pan - is still set; one memory covers both a file and a stream, since they share the same player. Never touched the button? It starts on fit.

With the slideshow turned on, a video that finishes opens the next one in the same set by itself, wrapping back to the first past the end - the same rule the phone app follows for video. With the slideshow off, or with only one file in the set, the player simply stops at the end instead.

The video player follows the same one-row, one-menu rule as the image viewer: scale mode lives on the row, the menu opens on Back, and nothing shown on the row is repeated inside it.

Before you even open it: in the file browser, an audio file's cell shows its own embedded cover art - read straight from the file's ID3, FLAC or MP4 tags - with the track name written over it, so a cell with a cover and one without still line up neatly next to each other.

The audio player itself carries that same cover, the track controls and the queue. A finished track opens the next file of the set by itself and wraps to the first one past the end - including a shuffled order, which now plays on without a tap on Next. Turn on Keep playing in background and audio, a file or a stream, keeps going once you leave the app, until you pause it; pausing lets go of the notification that keeps it alive.

The audio player's own menu holds one list too: the commands its row has no room for, then the file actions the open file allows, nothing shown twice. Screen off sits right on the row instead of hiding behind more.

The audio player, and an audio stream, offer their own Screen off: the display goes dark while the sound keeps going, and one tap brings the picture and controls straight back. A single tap on the dark screen otherwise only sends a thin ring spreading out from the touch point and shows the time and date above it for one second, so a stray touch in your pocket does not wake it by accident; a double tap, a long press or the watch's own button all bring it back properly.

The video player does not offer this - going dark during a video would hide the one thing its screen is open for.

All three players choose their control row by the size of your particular watch. A small round watch gets three main commands and two secondary ones, with the playing position drawn as a ring around the play button instead of its own time row; a larger watch gets three and three, plus the time row. Whatever does not have room on the row - playback mode, the stream pin, scale mode, screen off, the favorite button on a small watch, and file actions - moves into the menu behind more, so nothing becomes unreachable; every button stays at least 48dp on a side either way.

Prefer the layout from before the Play Store's shape review? The same Original layout switch covered in finding your way around the watch app also reshapes the players: two rows of four commands each, with the menu keeping only what those eight slots cannot hold.

However the row is showing, the panel that carries it hides itself after a set pause - adjustable right there with the auto-hide -/+ buttons, or from the phone's Wear Companion window, where the mirrored value always matches what the watch is really using, even an unusual number carried over from an older watch app.

A text file - stored on the watch or fetched from a network source - opens in its own reader instead of a refusal screen. Scroll it with a finger or the rotary bezel; your place and your chosen font size, Small, Medium or Large, both come back the next time you open it. A file too large to hold whole says so rather than pretending it loaded completely, and an empty file is told apart from one the watch simply could not read. A format the watch does not render at all still lands on the refusal screen - it just names the format now, instead of staying silent about it.

From a player's menu, Show on TV sends what's playing to the Chromecast your phone is already connected to - a live stream, or a picture or video that came from one of the phone's own network sources. The phone owns that session: it is the phone that was pointed at the TV, so while it runs, the same entry reads Stop showing on TV and ends it from either device. Nothing has been chosen yet? The watch says so in words, "Choose a TV on your phone first", rather than failing quietly.

One real limit: a file stored only on the watch itself cannot be sent this way, because its address means nothing off the watch. Only a stream or a phone-sourced file qualifies.