A Fitbit owner with a favorite third-party watch face has until Saturday, Nov. 28, to install it. After that date Google’s Fitbit App Gallery offers only apps and watch faces developed by Google and Fitbit, and a third-party item that is deleted from a watch cannot be downloaded again.
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Watches that already carry outside apps or faces keep them. The risk sits in the ordinary housekeeping moves: clearing a face to try another, or wiping a watch with a factory reset to fix a glitch, The change was announced on Nov. 9, which gives owners roughly three weeks between the first reports and the cutoff.
What changes on Nov. 28 in the Fitbit App Gallery
Analytics Insight reported on Nov. 10 that Google will limit the gallery so it only offers applications and watch faces developed by Google and Fitbit. From Nov. 28 owners can no longer install new third-party apps or clock faces, and outside software stops receiving updates. 9to5Google, which cited a Google post titled Important Update to the Fitbit App Gallery, quoted Google as saying the watches lose the ability to “install or update third-party apps and clocks.”
The reports list the affected devices slightly differently. Analytics Insight names eight: Sense, Sense 2, Versa, Versa 2, Versa 3, Versa 4, Versa Lite and Ionic. 9to5Google’s list has six, leaving out the Versa Lite and the Ionic, which Google already treats separately because of a voluntary recall. Google’s help page on the 2024 gallery change in Europe lists the same eight models.
Installed faces, deleted faces and factory resets
Everything already on a watch continues to work after the deadline, according to Analytics Insight, so nobody has to strip a watch in a hurry. The catch is permanence. The idevice.com report on the change says that once an item is deleted it cannot be downloaded again, and 9to5Google adds that a factory reset has the same effect.
Impact varies by model. Analytics Insight notes that the Sense and older Versa watches supported third-party apps, while the Sense 2 and Versa 4 launched without that capability, so owners of those two mainly lose outside clock faces. Google’s own support page already warns that some third-party developers may remove their faces from the Watch faces gallery, a reminder that availability of any given face was The distinction matters for owners who assume every face in the gallery will stay available forever; for some designs, the developer had already decided otherwise.
Analytics Insight also advises updating the Google Health app to version 5.12 so Google’s own apps and faces keep working properly. That version figure comes from that outlet alone; Google’s pages read for this article do not repeat it.
Developers, Gallery Admin and the Wear OS pivot
The change reaches developers on the same day. 9to5Google, in a report by Abner Li on Nov. 9, says Google stops accepting new uploads and updates after Nov. 28, lets developers download their projects or request removal before then, and retires the Gallery Admin tools. Whatever remains is reachable only by people who already installed it.
Li reads the move as consistent with Google’s focus on Wear OS and the Pixel Watch rather than Fitbit’s own operating system, and suggests the Sense 2 and Versa 4 should probably stop being sold. Analytics Insight adds that Google removed third-party apps and faces from the gallery in the European Economic Area in 2024, citing regulatory requirements, and that the November change extends those limits worldwide.
The practical advice in the coverage is consistent. Analytics Insight tells owners who want to keep a particular third-party face to install it before the cutoff, and idevice.com suggests keeping any face that would be missed and avoiding resets. Because deleted items cannot come back, the safest sequence is to leave everything installed through Nov. 28 and beyond, and to treat a factory reset as the point of no return for outside content.
The 2024 change in Europe offers a preview. Google’s help page says it removed the ability to install third-party apps and clock faces from the Google Health app for users in the European Economic Area in June 2024, citing new regulatory requirements, while users elsewhere were unaffected. Those European owners kept a selection of Google Health and Google apps. The Nov. 28 date ends that regional exception and applies the same rule everywhere.
Google’s own announcement was not readable in full during research, so the dates and device lists here rest on 9to5Google, Analytics Insight and idevice.com. The open question is whether Google will publish a count of how many third-party faces vanish from the gallery on Nov. 28; Developers have a short window to act: 9to5Google says they can download their projects or ask for removal before the deadline, which means some third-party content may disappear from the gallery even sooner than Nov. 28 if its creators choose.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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