Sleep with OnePlus Watch 2

Hi @petr-urbandroid
I’ve been using Sleep for YEARS at this point and am just now retiring my Pebble Time. My wife and I each got a OnePlus Watch 2 and we’re experiencing the same trouble others reported here and in the other OnePlus 2R thread in that our watches are not vibrating when the alarm triggers.
I’ve personally updated the on-watch and on-phone apps to the most recent betas, verified settings and permissions are as expected, ensured hibernation was off, and still, at most, I get a single vibration (and typically only if I’ve triggered sleep tracking – if I didn’t start sleep tracking, I can see that the watch received the notification but again, no vibration :\ )

If there’s anything I can do to help sort this out, please let me know.

Just for comparison’s sake, I installed the Google Clock app onto the watch and then set an alarm on my phone and it successfully (and repeatedly) vibrated the watch :\

one last bit of info – like the poster in the 2R thread, if I keep the display active, vibrations seem to work okay. I enabled the always-on display, but that’s not sufficiently “on.”

Thank you, that helped. I was able to go into Settings → Apps & notifications → App Permissions → Sensors and enable All The Time for Sleep. Let’s see if that helps! Most appreciated.

So, I tried setting the alarm in the Sleep Android app, and then initiated a Sleep session via the watch. As you report, the watch did vibrated once, but did not continue to do so. This is with the OnePlus Watch 2 running WearOS 5. I did a subsequent test with the Watch’s onboard Alarm app, and it both made sound and continues vibrating in response to the Alarm. So not sure if that helps, but more data for the mix. :man_shrugging:

I performed one more test with a different 3rd party alarm app (amdroid) and it also did the right thing and triggered on my phone as well as my watch, so it must be possible somehow (amdroid did have a companion app as well).
Definitely want to keep using Sleep as Android, though, as the UI on this other one is…not the greatest, and I’ve got a fair bit invested in Sleep as Android already

@ravemir sorry if I missed it, but have you tried with version 5.23 of the app which can be sideloaded from here https://sleep.urbandroid.org/wp-content/uploads/release/SleepWear-5.23.apk or got from the BETA channel onthe Play Store…

In that version we are marking the vibrations as alarm (not media)… so the assumption is it could help in some situation… but it did not help in case of the Pixel 1 subtle vibrations after the Wear OS 5 update…

Wow, thank you for confirming. Heard a couple of other reports but then radio silence after suggesting the Beta version, so I was scrambling to find something on my configs that could explain it.

Thank you for trying it out and letting us know how it went!

Sorry if I’m being pedantic, but are you sure you are running Wear OS 5, and not 4? My watch only shows version 4 under “Other > About Watch”.

This could help (somewhat) rule out the vibrations issues introduced with Wear OS 5 in the Pixels.

I did try that: installed both 5.23 for Wear OS and 20241209 for Android (as instructed by @lenka-urbandroid) running under Wear OS 4 (I’ve seen multiple mentions to 5 in several threads, but I have seen no indications that Wear OS 5 is even available for this watch). I’m not sure if it would affect it, but the icon for sleep tracking still shows the animated bars (typical of media playing controls) while sleep tracking.

And with this, I got the single vibration result, and nothing else…unless I turned the screen on, at which point it would vibrate, but cease completely once it was off. I even tried turning on Tap to Wake or even AOD, but no difference in outcomes.

I’ve issued a refund request on Amazon, but am still willing to give this watch a shot before actually returning it, if it can trigger the alarm. Luckily, @bmoyles provided his results on using a different 3rd party app, which kind of invalidates my suspicion that this watch just wasn’t meant to trigger timely vibrations with the screen off (some vendors go to great lengths to squeeze battery out of their devices, and this would not surprise me) even if they have the screen on on their scenario.

@petr-urbandroid : lmk if you need ADB logs from the watch, as well as any tests you might want to perform.

PS: Sorry for the wall of text, just trying to be as thorough as possible :sweat_smile: .

I set an alarm with the stock Android Clock for sleep last night and it triggered no problem. I had a delayed one set for Sleep as Android and it triggered on phone but not on device :frowning:

You are correct, it is running Wear OS 4.0, not 5.

Sadly, seems like it made no difference. Here’s the output from last night, using the OnePlus Watch 2 and Sleep as Android:

So, I decided to have a look at both the stock OnePlus Clock app, the 3rd party one, that @bmoyles mentioned, and the Google Clock one and they all worked, with one common feature: they all displayed their screen by default!

For as long as I remember, the SaA app has not displayed the screen on WearOS (I always have to tap the Clock icon at the bottom of the watch for it to open), but if it did, it would solve the issue for this watch.

And seeing as this is the behavior of at least 3 different other apps, I wonder if this shouldn’t be the case (at least optionally) for SaA? It could break expectations of former users, potentially flashing them in the middle of the night, but if there were an opt-out option, maybe it could be ok? On the other hand, it is the default for several other Wear OS alarm apps, so maybe this is a convention?

@petr-urbandroid : could we persuade you to implement a screen on option (or default behavior) for Wear OS? I tried making the case that this is not just a workaround for one specific watch, but instead something several other apps follow, and as such could be desirable for users.

Hello @ravemir … I have prepared a blind workaround… for this… in addition to the CPU lock we are also taking a screenlock… would you be willing to give it try and sideload the APK:
https://sleep.urbandroid.org/wp-content/uploads/release/SleepWear-5.24.apk

It worked: the screen kept on, and so the alarm kept vibrating! There’s a chance that if I put my hand on the watch I end up muting them again, but at least it will start vibrating by default.

Thank you for the willingness to try it out! Is this something you will consider adding in a future stable, or would you like to investigate further?

Ok, after having a missed alarm the very next day, I decided to test an hypothesis and it checked out: tilting the watch during the alarm shuts the screen off.

At the time of the first missed alarm, I had that setting on, but have since tested with it off and flicking the wrist made the screen turn off still.

The third party app manages to work even then. The only visible change is that it displays the snooze+dismiss screen during the alarm.

@ravemir here is a another APK 5.25 https://sleep.urbandroid.org/wp-content/uploads/release/SleepWear-5.25.apk

Would you be willing to give it a try?

I cannot properly test this on my TWP5 as 1) it is Wear OS 4 (Android 10) and there are more and more restrictions to start screens from background in every new version of Android - in fact I did not expect I would be even able to start the screen if you look at Restrictions on starting activities from the background  |  Android Developers … 2) TWP5 has a LCD display layer so even when a screen is started it is not visible until the screen is pressed…

Please let me know…

Tested it out, and the screen does pop-up successfully (at least when out of DnD, or this watch’s Sleep Mode). Tilting the watch back still causes it to be dismissed, sadly :frowning: Even the 3rd and 1st party apps do this!

Can this be a watch bug, when even the 1st party app is misbehaving? If it isn’t, not sure how Wear OS got to this point: triggering an alarm app causes it to be so easily dismissed to the point you can’t trust it.

EDIT: Was on my way to post on their forums, when I realized that I had actually tested on the Google Clock app. The actual stock app behaves exactly as expected! (how convenient!). Will still reach out to them.

EDIT 2: @petr-urbandroid my my OnePlus is also running WearOS 4, but it shows Android 13 as its version (you can check the screenshots below).
signal-2024-12-16-183146_003 signal-2024-12-16-183146_002

@ravemir many thanks for further tests…

What I’m doing in the latest version is: getWindow().addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON);
This should at least on phone keep the screen on when the app is in foreground… but it may be ignored on Wear OS…

Also I’m taking a screen bright wake lock, but this is documented to get released when screen is turned off…

I guess I;m doing maximum I can on my end :(… I do not have more ideas…

You are right Wear OS 4 is Android 13 and Wear OS 5 is Android 14, my bad…

I think this isn’t a Wear OS problem as other devices will keep vibrating even with screen off…

Thanks for all the effort. I will reach out to OnePlus through their support channels to get some sort of confirmation on whether this is intended behavior or a bug, and will let you know if they do reply.

I would not rule out the former, seeing as they have really good battery numbers, which might be supported by this type of behavior.

I’m still providing details to the OnePlus support team (it may take a while, as they might want me to factory reset the watch, of all things…) but I have a new development that could be relevant: I was able to get Google’s Clock app to keep vibrating with the screen off by changing the “Alarm volume” Setting to be non-zero.

This might still mean there’s a bug at play on the 1+ Watch 2, since I doubt it was their intention to also silence alarm “vibrations” when setting watch volume. Is this the current behavior on the TWP5 watch as well? (I’ll be somewhat embarrassed if I missed this)