Let’s be honest here. It’s not like getting and setting up a new Wear OS watch face is particularly tricky right now. You can do this easily via a companion app on your phone or the Play Store on your Wear OS watch. The latter even has an optional switch to automatically apply the latest watch face you’ve downloaded.
Still, thanks to some APK spying, courtesy of the folks at Android Authority, we now know that Google is still working on making the whole watch face application process easier. Apparently the latest version of the Google Play Store for phones (version 43.9.17-31) has an alternate button that appears once you click the “Install” button on a Wear OS watch face. Once installation is complete, the button will automatically change to ‘Set as watch face’. That’s it. It all speaks for itself. All it takes is one more click for the watch face to be applied to your wearable. This will presumably work with a delay, even if your watch and phone are not currently nearby.
New watch face application button
Although the new button is already built into the APK and Android Authority was able to make it appear, it is still not functional. Hopefully the usability upgrade is just around the corner.