Unable to distribute app on Android Wear in Google Play Developer console

Question

Im trying to submit my newly created Android Wear watch face through Google Play Developer Console. The problem is checkbox "Distribute your app on Android Wear" in pricing and distribution section is disabled. I cant understand why.

What I did:

1) Uploaded screenshot for Android Wear

2) Uploaded 2 APK files in closed Beta releases. Both files are signed with one key, have different version names. First is phone apk with embedded wear apk (minSdkVersion 23), second - standalone wear apk (minSdkVersion 25) has meta-data android:name="com.google.android.wearable.standalone" android:value="true" in manifest file.

Everythings seems fine and app is ready to publish in production, except the "Distribute your app on Android Wear" checkbox which remains disabled. What Im missing?

Answer 1

I stumbled upon the exact same issue.

• I had <uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.type.watch" /> in my manifest
• I had <meta-data android:name="com.google.android.wearable.standalone" android:value="true" /> in my manifest
• minSdk was set to 25

But still the checkbox for Wear distribution was disabled.

For fun I tried editing the HTML with Chrome's inspection tools, and removed the "disabled" attribute from the checkbox. Sure enough, the setting stuck after enabling the checkbox, and now Wear distribution is enabled. Give it a try!

Answer 2

You may want to check Packaging and Distributing Wear Apps and see if you've missed something.

As discussed, aside from specifying APK's version code (standalone Wear and embedded Wear), also check if you've updated your Wear module's build.gradle file to include the following if an existing embedded app has a minimum SDK version of 23:

android {
    // Allows you to reference product flavors in your
    // phone module's build.gradle file
    publishNonDefault true
    ...
    defaultConfig
    {
       // This is the minSdkVersion of the Wear 1.x embedded app
       minSdkVersion 23
       ...
    }
    buildTypes {...}
    productFlavors {
        wear1 {
          // Use the defaultConfig value
        }
        wear2 {
            minSdkVersion 25
        }
    }
}

Also, check Distribute to Android Wear for more information.