Ask HN: Please suggest a smart watch that can be customized

9•VladVladikoff•1mo ago

I’m looking for an affordable/cheap smart watch than can be modified. Ideally I just want to put a custom image background and lockdown/disable all other smart features, especially games or things like that. And preferably cheap enough that when my kid inevitably loses it or breaks it I won’t be crying over the wasted money.

Comments

randycupertino•1mo ago

Not apple watch! You CANNOT turn off the "smart stack" and it's really obnoxious there is no way to entirely mute or remove it.

I've customized all the settings as much as possible to have it not auto-turn on when you raise your arm, removed all the apps from the "smart stack," turned off "Auto-Launch Live Activities," turned off scroll crown to enable smart stack, and followed a bunch of other online tutorials on how to get rid of it and the damn thing still pops up ALL THE TIME. It's really obnoxious I will be in meetings and the stupid smart stack will self-launch and be buzzing me and distracting it's incredibly infuriating there is no way to remove it entirely.

runjake•1mo ago

Can you elaborate? I have a Series 11 and I never see the Smart Stack.

I’m not even sure how to get it to show up.

randycupertino•1mo ago

I am jealous. Mine comes up all the time and there is no way to stop it!

I've followed the instructions in all of these threads and it still self-launches!

https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/186uiup/why_doe...

https://www.gearpatrol.com/tech/apple-watch-disable-live-act...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255159491?page=2&sortBy...

https://www.reddit.com/r/watchOSBeta/comments/1ee7pwy/how_ca...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255781207?sortBy=rank

runjake•1mo ago

Ah, I wear my watch with the crown facing outward and up on my wrist a bit so I'm not prone to moving the crown. Thanks for the response!

fsflover•1mo ago

Here you go: https://pine64.org/devices/pinetime/

VladVladikoff•1mo ago

Funny, this is the one I found that looked good. Seems like I was going in the right direction.

austin-cheney•1mo ago

My old Garmin Forerunning 45 is super customizable. It may not be the best thing out there but you have wild freedom in the display including a store of free models created by other Forerunner users.

mcsniff•1mo ago

Pebble. There is brand new Pebble hardware coming soon, the Pebble Time 2.

The hardware is well described, the watch firmware is open source @ https://github.com/coredevices/PebbleOS, the companion mobile app is also now open source @ https://github.com/coredevices/mobileapp. It works with GadgetBridge and microPebble.

I've been using a Pebble since the original one, currently with a Pebble 2 Duo on my wrist and Pebble has yet to be dethroned for me.

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