Recording on Android Watch (Wear OS)
Record from your wrist on a Wear OS watch — recordings sync to your Android phone and land in your library transcribed and summarized.
Wave on Wear OS lets you record straight from your wrist. The watch captures the audio, hands it to the Wave app on your Android phone, and the phone uploads it — so it arrives in your library transcribed and summarized like any other Wave.
What you need
- A watch running Wear OS 3 or later, with a microphone
- Wave installed on your Android phone, and signed in
The watch never talks to Wave's servers itself, so it doesn't need its own Wi-Fi or data plan. Your phone does the upload, which means a recording reaches your library once your phone has it and is online.
Installing Wave on your watch
The Wear OS app ships on its own Play Store track, so it does not install automatically with the phone app. Two ways to get it:
If you have a Wear OS watch paired and the watch app isn't on it yet, Wave shows a card at the top of your library: Wave works on your watch — "Record from your wrist — install Wave on your Wear OS watch."
Tap Install and Wave opens the Play Store listing directly on your watch, where you confirm the install. If it can't reach your watch you'll see "Couldn't open your watch" — install from the watch instead. Tap Dismiss and the card won't come back.
The first time you open Wave on the watch, allow the microphone and notification permissions. Notifications matter here — Wave records through a foreground service, and that service needs a notification to keep running.
Signing in
There's nothing to type on the watch. Your sign-in is pushed over from your phone, so as long as you're signed in on the phone the watch is ready.
If the watch shows Sign in required ("Open Wave on your phone to sign in"), open Wave on your phone with the watch nearby, then tap Retry.
Recording
To throw a recording away instead, tap the ✕ button. Wave asks Cancel Recording? — "This recording will not be saved." — with a check to discard and a cross to keep recording. There's no pause on the watch; stop and start a new recording instead.
While it runs in the background
Recording continues when the screen turns off, when you lower your wrist, and when you switch apps. A Recording notification ("Wave is recording audio") stays up, and the recording surfaces on your watch face as an ongoing activity — tap it to jump back into Wave.
Wave watches your battery while recording. At 15% a Low battery warning appears under the timer. At 10% Wave stops the recording, saves it, and queues it — so a dying watch doesn't cost you the audio. Same idea if a call or your assistant grabs the microphone: if it isn't handed back within a minute, Wave stops and saves what it captured.
How recordings reach your library
Finished recordings go into a queue on the watch and sync to your phone whenever the two are connected. The status sits under the record button:
- Sending 1 to phone… — your phone is in range and the hand-off is under way. A long recording can take a minute or two.
- Synced! — your phone confirmed it received the recording.
- ⚠ 1 waiting — open Wave on your phone — your phone is out of range, or the recording has sat unacknowledged for more than ten minutes. That almost always means the Wave app on your phone isn't running (see the Samsung section below). Open Wave on your phone and the transfer completes within seconds.
Tapping either line asks the watch to re-send right away.
Nothing is lost while your phone is out of range — the recording and its audio stay on the watch until your phone acknowledges it, and only then is the local copy deleted. Once your phone has the file it uploads it, and the session appears in your library titled Watch Recording... until transcription and the summary finish. See What Happens After You Record for the rest of that flow.
Opening Wave on the watch flushes the queue, so a stalled transfer often clears just by launching the app there.
If your phone receives a recording while Wave isn't running, it shows a Watch recording received notification — "Tap to open Wave and upload it." Tap it and the upload starts as soon as Wave opens.
Keeping sync reliable on Samsung phones
The watch hands recordings to your phone through the Wear OS data layer, and Android only wakes Wave for that hand-off if Wave is allowed to run in the background. On Samsung phones (One UI), battery management can quietly stop that. If recordings keep showing waiting on the watch until you open Wave, change these settings on the phone:
Other Android phones have equivalents under battery or app settings; look for an "unrestricted" or "not optimized" option for Wave.
Forcing a sync from your phone
If recordings stay unsent, go to Settings → Capture Sources → Sync Watch Recordings on your phone. Wave asks the watch to re-scan for recordings it hasn't sent and flush its queue, then tells you what it heard back: Found 1 recording. Transferring now., No pending recordings found on Watch., or — if the watch didn't answer in time — "Asked your watch to resend any pending recordings. Keep Wave open until the watch shows ✓ Synced."
On Wave for Android before 4.0.3 that confirmation always read "No pending recordings found on Watch." even when recordings were pending and the retry went out. Update Wave on your phone to get the real count; until then, check the watch itself to see whether the line under the record button has cleared.
FAQ
No. The watch records offline and syncs to your phone over the watch-to-phone connection. The upload happens from your phone.
Open Wave on your phone first — that alone completes most stuck transfers, because the phone app wasn't running to receive it. Keep the watch and phone near each other, then open Wave on the watch and tap the waiting line. If it still doesn't clear, use Sync Watch Recordings in phone settings, and on a Samsung phone check the battery settings above.
No. Stop the recording and start a new one — both will appear as separate sessions in your library.
Record on whichever device is closer to the conversation. Recording on your phone also gives you live captions and the in-recording tools the watch doesn't have, and everything lands in the same library — see Using Wave on Multiple Devices.
On an Apple Watch instead? See Recording on Apple Watch.
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