Compass Complication

A standalone compass complication for Wear OS, designed to integrate into any watch face that exposes complication slots.

Compass Complication does not function as a watch face itself. Instead, it provides a real-time directional reading inside the complication slots that watch face designers have built into their faces. Choose one of nine visual styles, place it into a slot on any compatible Wear OS watch face, and the complication updates as you turn your wrist using the watch's built-in magnetometer.


** Nine variants, matched to slot shapes **

Variants 1–7 work in both Circle and SmallBox complication slots:

1. Needle — bicolor compass needle, red north and light gray south
2. Cardinals — needle with rotating N, E, S, W letters
3. Ticks — north arrow with 30° tick marks and cardinal letters
4. Ring — adds intercardinal letters (NE, SE, SW, NW)
5. Rose — eight-point compass rose star with two-tone shading
6. Arrow & Degrees — compass arrow on the left, heading in degrees on the right
7. Degrees & Arrow — degrees on the left, compass arrow on the right

Variants 8–9 are designed for LargeBox slots:

8. HUD Cardinals — horizontal heading strip with N, E, S, W markers
9. HUD Full — horizontal strip with all eight cardinals and a live degree readout


** Features **

- Real-time updates as the watch detects changes in heading
- Smoothed motion through low-pass filtering on raw sensor data
- True north or magnetic north — toggle in settings; true north uses location for declination correction (long press the app screen for settings)
- Calibration screen with a figure-8 motion guide, accessible from the app
- Ambient mode support so complications remain visible when the watch dims


** Caution **

- For the best performance, avoid placing more than one compass complication on the same watch face.
- Using a compass complication may slightly increase battery usage, although this has been significantly reduced in the latest version.
- The compass may take a few seconds to activate after the screen wakes up. This behavior is related to the battery optimization improvements.
- After restarting your watch, you may need to open the app once manually before the complication starts working properly.


** Compatibility **

- Wear OS 3.0 and above (API 30+)
- Works with any watch face that supports complication slots accepting SMALL_IMAGE, LONG_TEXT, or PHOTO_IMAGE data types
- Standalone Wear OS app — no phone companion required


** Privacy **

- No accounts, no advertising, no analytics, no tracking
- Location permission is optional and used only on the device for declination calculation when true north is enabled
- No data is transmitted off the watch


** About **

Compass Complication is built by CELEST Watches, an independent designer of Wear OS watch faces and utilities. The complication is designed to pair with watch faces from any designer, adding directional awareness to faces that did not include it.

Visit celest-watches.com for related watch faces and apps.

Recent changes:
Updated to target Android 16 (API 36).