How to make an Apple Watch work with Android

What if you have an Android phone, but consider the Apple Watch superior to other smartwatches? Well, you could switch to iOS, or, you know, you could hack your way into making an Apple Watch work with Android, like Abishek Muthian did.

So I decided to make Apple Watch work with my Android phone usingopen-source applications, interoperable protocols and 3rd party services. If you just want to use my code and techniques and not read my commentary on it then feel free to checkout my GitHub for sources.

Abishek Muthian

Getting notifications to work, so that notifications from the Android phone would show up on the Apple Watch, was the hardest part. Muthian had to write a Python script to read the notifications on the Android device using Termux, and then use Pushover to send them to the Apple Watch. For things like contacts and calendar, he relied on *DAV, which isn't exactly difficult to set up, so pretty much anyone who's reading this can do that.

Sadly, initial setup of the watch did require the use of an iPhone, using the same SIM as is in the Android phone. This way, it's possible to set up mobile data as well as calling, and with the SIM back in the Android phone, a call will show up on both the Apple Watch and the Android device. Of course, this initial setup makes the process a bit more cumbersome than just buying a used Apple Watch off eBay or whatever, but I'm honestly surprised everything's working as well as it does.

This goes to show that the Apple Watch is not nearly as deeply integrated" with the iPhone as Apple so loves to claim, and making the Apple Watch work with Android in a more official manner certainly doesn't look to be as impossible as Apple makes it out to be when dealing with antitrust regulators. Of course, any official support would be much more involved, especially in the testing department, but it would be absolute peanuts, financially, for a company with Apple's disgusting level of wealth.

Anyway, if you want to setup an Apple Watch with Android, Muthian has put the code on GitHub.