Most common problems with Feel the Wear

Published on April 13, 2026

With the v1.0.0 release, after a long development pause, I need to clarify some shortcomings of Feel The Wear 2 and how to mitigate them. The original FTW had its own Google+ community with this information, but sadly Google+ is long gone.

Development of Feel The Wear 2 was paused for well over a year, including work on bringing its features on par with the original FTW. With v1.0, I am back on track, and I also need to revive and refresh the list of the most common problems that can cause the app to stop working.

Expand the table of contents

App doesn’t vibrate on incoming notifications

Sometimes the app stops reacting to incoming notifications, so your watch does not vibrate. Testing a pattern from inside the app still works; the issue is only with incoming notifications. There are several possible causes:

Since Android 6, there have been aggressive battery/memory optimizations such as Doze mode and App Standby. My app needs an exception from these. You can open the system battery-optimization settings from Feel The Wear 2 settings -> Disable Battery Optimizations. There, set FTW2 to “Not optimized” (or “Allow background usage” on newer Android versions). This exception can be enough, but to be safe, there is also a “Force Keep Alive” option in my app’s settings. It shows a permanent notification, which helps keep the app running in the background.
Other battery optimizers and task killers usually do more harm than good, so please avoid using them.
Several manufacturers have their own “improvements” and battery optimizations that freeze or kill apps running in the background. You can check whether your manufacturer has such restrictions on Don’t Kill My App! , where they collect explanations and mitigation steps. The worst offenders (as of 2026) are still Huawei, Xiaomi, OnePlus, and Samsung. Read that page carefully; it can help solve many background-related issues on your phone.
Huawei only: Huawei has the worst battery optimizations called Protected Apps and PowerGenie (is this still true in 2026?). My app must be allowed to run in the background there. On Android 6 and newer, all steps from items 2 and 4 must be followed. In some cases, even after all these steps, Huawei still freezes the app after 15 minutes in the background. I have not yet found a reliable solution for this. One user reported that enabling “High performance” mode in battery settings fixed all issues on his Huawei P9 Lite, so you can try that as well.
Some apps seem to interfere with Android notifications. This looks like a system bug though, because there is no official way for third-party apps to block notifications. If you use other apps that listen for notifications (i.e., apps that request notification access), disable and then re-enable their notification-listening functionality; this should “unstick” them. My app can also cause similar behavior in other apps. One user reported that Tasker and its AutoNotification Intercept caused my app to stop receiving notifications even while it was disabled. Disabling and re-enabling it resolved all issues.
From time to time, apps can lose notification-access permission. To fix this, disable and then re-enable the permission in system settings. The option to open the notification-access settings is near the end of the FTW2 settings screen. At least for me, this has not happened since Wear OS 5.
There is a relatively new feature in the app settings: “Phone Screen On Behaviour.” It can be set to not vibrate when your phone screen is on. Many people asked for this feature, but some are still confused when it works as intended.

Double vibrations

Does your watch first vibrate with the custom pattern set in FTW 2, then follow with a very weak second vibration? This “double vibration” is the most common issue with FTW.

The second vibration comes from the original notification itself. FTW sends a command from the phone to the watch, telling it to vibrate with a custom pattern. Third-party apps, including Feel The Wear 2, cannot modify notifications from other apps, so those apps’ notifications need to be muted.

Android Wear OS support says: “If your app vibrates or makes a sound for notifications on your phone, your watch will vibrate.” To remove the weak second vibration, set both the third-party app’s notification vibration to off and its notification tone/sound to silent. This mutes the default watch vibration completely, so you only get the custom pattern from my app. Do this for all apps that cause double vibrations, if they provide such options.

If there is no such option, you can set a delay for the custom vibration in FTW 2 settings, so it is “overlaid” on the default vibration. FTW 2 is fast and usually vibrates sooner than the notification is forwarded to the watch.

Sound is not working

There are several reasons why sound may not work:

Does your watch have a speaker? The app checks this automatically, but it could still fail in edge cases :)
Are sounds muted on your watch? Swipe from top to bottom to open quick settings, find the speaker icon, and unmute the sound. The exact steps can differ across watch manufacturers and Wear OS versions.
The most common reason is low alarm volume, or alarm volume being turned off completely (on the watch, not the phone). Feel The Wear 2 sound volume is tied to the watch’s system alarm volume. Increase it to hear sounds. You can also set a custom sound volume in the app settings.
The app can stop working after some time for several reasons. Check the other section.
Phone calls use the phone ringer volume by default, not the alarm volume. So if you do not hear sounds only for incoming phone calls, increase the ringer volume in your watch’s system settings.

Muting vibrations does not work?

Apps cannot modify other apps, so Feel The Wear 2 cannot mute other apps’ notifications. My app only vibrates in parallel with displayed notifications, so all mute features (e.g., quick mute, quiet hours, app widget, etc.) apply only to vibrations and sounds generated by my app.

Android Wear OS support says: “If your app vibrates or makes a sound for notifications on your phone, your watch will vibrate.” To remove the weak default vibration, set both the third-party app’s notification vibration to off and its notification tone/sound to silent. This fully mutes the default watch vibration, so you only get the custom pattern from my app. This must be done for all apps that cause double vibrations, if they provide such options.

Only custom vibrations set in FTW 2 can be muted from within my app.

You can also set your phone/watch to DND mode. By default, my app will still vibrate/play sounds, even while the phone is in DND mode. If you want my app to stay quiet in DND mode, enable “Obey Phone’s Priority Mode” in settings.

Phone calls

Phone calls are a tricky part of my app because Wear OS does not provide an option to disable the default vibration pattern. It can only be suppressed with Theater Mode or DND mode, and Theater Mode is not even available on some watches running Wear OS 5 and 6 (looking at you OnePlus).

So the phone-call functionality is mainly targeted at sounds.

Hourly chime

Hourly chime has become buggy, inexact, or even non-functional on many watches. As of 2026, I have confirmed it works on all Pixel watches and Samsung Galaxy watches with older Wear OS 5. OnePlus watches with Wear OS 5 kill apps when they are minimized and also remove their scheduled background alarms. As a result, the chime may beep only when a notification arrives just before and wakes the app.

Samsung removed the exact-alarm permission UI from watch settings on Wear OS 6, so it does not work there. On Wear OS 5, they introduced an alarm “improvement” from phones that makes all alarms inexact, so the chime can be up to 3 minutes late.

Phone disconnection alerts

These alerts depend heavily on Wear OS messaging APIs and can be delayed a lot. It is nice to have a custom sound for this event, but for better reliability, use the watch’s built-in disconnection alert if it has one.