herold

00 — Setting up the watch without a Samsung phone

This is the very first step. Everything else in this repo assumes a watch that is already set up.

For the Galaxy Watch 4 and newer, Samsung officially requires setup through the Galaxy Wearable app on an Android phone. With an iPhone — or with no phone at all — there seems to be no way past the welcome screen.

But there is a way around that hurdle, and Samsung documents it itself.

The procedure (Galaxy Watch 4 and newer, Wear OS)

Turn the watch on with the power button.
On the welcome screen, swipe up.
Tap the “Wear” icon at the top repeatedly — keep going until this message appears:

“Please long-tap watch icon for more than 3 seconds”

The message disappears again after a few seconds. If nothing shows up, keep tapping; it can easily take two dozen taps.
Now press and hold the same icon for longer than 3 seconds, until “Wird gestartet” (“starting”) appears.
The watch runs the rest of the setup on its own (language, time zone, Wi-Fi). Done — the watch now works standalone.

Source: Samsung Germany — setting up a Galaxy Watch without a smartphone

What works afterwards — and what does not

Out of the box, a watch set up this way stays bare: time, fitness tracking, music controls. No notifications, no Play Store, no apps.

That is exactly where this repo comes in:

Gap	Solution here
No notifications from the iPhone	`herold/` — pulls them straight off the iPhone over ANCS
No way to install apps without a Google account	`markt/` — anonymous Play sign-in
No custom watch faces	`zifferblatt/` — an example to build your own from
Full of useless bloatware	`werkzeuge/entruempeln.sh`

Do these right afterwards

1. Unlock the developer options (needed for everything that follows): Settings → About watch (Info zur Uhr) → Software information (Softwareinformationen) → tap the software version repeatedly until “Entwicklermodus aktiviert” (“developer mode enabled”) appears.

2. Turn on debugging over Wi-Fi: Settings → Developer options (Entwickleroptionen) → ADB debugging and Debugging over Wi-Fi. That screen also shows the address (IP:Port) you need in order to connect.

The port changes every time the watch restarts. Do not guess it — werkzeuge/uhr.sh --id finds it over mDNS.

3. Turn off factory reset protection — otherwise every app install fails (see 07-findings.md):

adb shell settings put global secure_frp_mode 0
adb shell settings put secure secure_frp_mode 0

Pitfalls

A factory reset undoes everything. After one, the procedure above starts from the top again — including developer options and factory reset protection.
A system update (to a newer Wear OS, for example) turns debugging over Wi-Fi off, brings removed bloatware back and can reset factory reset protection. Just walk through the three points above again.
Bluetooth to the iPhone is a different thing from the Samsung setup: the watch pairs later in the completely normal way, through the iPhone’s Bluetooth settings — Herold takes care of that. Details in 03-herold-app.md.

This site is open source. Improve this page.