Hybrid smartwatches have become quite popular for those who want their daily activity tracked, but maybe aren’t interested in having all the features on their wrist. Fossil’s hybrid smartwatches are some of the best you can buy, and there’s a Fossil smartwatch app available — called Fossil Hybrid Smartwatches — so you don’t need to over-rely on tweaking settings from your watch.
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What is the Fossil smartwatch app?
The Fossil Hybrid Smartwatches app is the smartphone companion app for any and all Fossil hybrid smartwatches. It’s the app you’ll want to download right away after taking your new Fossil hybrid watch out of the box. It lets you check your daily activity and sleep, customize notifications, set alarms, and change watch face shortcuts.
Be sure you’re downloading the correct app, though. There’s also an app in the Play Store called Fossil Q Legacy, which is simply a legacy application used for older Fossil products like fitness trackers.
You can download the Fossil Hybrid Smartwatches app for Android and iOS at the links below.
Which devices are compatible with the Fossil smartwatch app?
All Fossil hybrid smartwatches are compatible with the Hybrid Smartwatches app. (No surprise there.) The full-fledged Fossil smartwatches running Wear OS, including the Fossil Gen 5 series, do not work with this app. The full list of compatible watches can be found below:
How to use the Fossil smartwatch app
There are four main sections of the Fossil smartwatch app, and each one is pretty straightforward. The first page is the Home page, where you’ll see your activity stats. A set of Apple Watch-like activity rings can be found on the top of this page, which display your steps, active minutes, caloric burn, and sleep.
Below that, you’ll find individual pages for each of these metrics, where you can see more detailed stats broken down into daily, weekly, and monthly timeframes.
You can customize your Hybrid HR’s watch face complications by navigating to the Customization tab. (By the way, I only have a Fossil Hybrid HR with me, so your customization options may vary depending on which watch you own.)
Fossil includes a handful of preset complication setups for travel and fitness, but I’d recommend just setting up the complications the way you want to. There are only four of them. Just tap the complication you want to change and select from the list that shows up on the bottom of your screen. The full list of complications include your heart rate, date, chance of rain, second time zone, calories, battery, weather, steps, and active minutes.
Tap on the little pencil icon on the watch face to change the background design of the watch face. There are a few preset options here, or you can add your own photo to bring some more personality to your watch. If you go this route, I’d recommend using a photo that you don’t mind being distorted. The e-ink display is pretty low-res, so really any photos of humans or pets will be obscured. Plus, the complications get in the way.
You can also customize the physical button shortcuts on this page. Again, tap the shortcut you’d like to change, then choose from the shortcut list on the bottom. Available shortcuts include: workout mode, wellness dashboard, music control, stopwatch, past notifications, timer, weather, and commute time.
Oh! This is important. Once you’re done, be sure to hit the black check mark button on the top-right of your screen after making your changes.
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You can set alarms, manage smartphone notifications, and move alerts from the Alerts page. Clicking on the alarm box allows you to make a note for that alarm, set it to repeat, and set the time. The Calls & Messages section lets you choose who you receive calls from on your wrist.
Click on the Apps section to choose which apps notify you. All apps are turned off by default, but you can turn on notifications for essentially any app you have installed on your smartphone.
The Profile tab is sort of the catch-all for all other settings. Here, you can edit your profile photo, height, and weight. You can see your activity and sleep records, set step goals, manage connected apps, and update your connected watch’s software.
It really doesn’t get more straightforward than that — the Fossil smartwatch app is relatively bare-bones compared to some other smartwatch companion apps.
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