This app makes Android Wear look like the Apple Watch

This app makes your Android smartwatch look like the Apple Watch. Photo: Bubble Cloud Launcher

This app makes your Android smartwatch look like the Apple Watch. Photo: Bubble Cloud Launcher

The Apple Watch doesn’t work with Android smartphones, and probably never will. That means if you’re an Android fan who loves the Apple Watch’s Bubble UI, you’ve got two choices: get an iPhone, or install this new launcher that will turn your Android smartwatch into a virtual clone of the Apple Watch’s launch screen.

It’s called Bubble Cloud Launcher (via Android Central), and it’s available for free on the Google Play Store, with the option to buy a premium version for $2.99. The launcher takes all of the existing app icons on your Android Wear smartwatch and puts them in a colored bubble, as well as interactive widget bubbles for the clock, date, battery power, and Internet signal.

Here’s a video of it in action:

Bubble Cloud Launcher is highly customizable. The settings for the launcher include the option to customize your watch face, your background, touch sensitivity, peek card options, and more. And if you upgrade to the premium version of the app, you can also send emails from your watch, expand Bubble Cloud Widgets across multiple screens, put contacts in a bubble shortcut, and more. You can also set up Bubble Cloud Launcher on your stock Android device, and it works similarly.

Obviously, Bubble Cloud Launcher looks quite a bit like watchOS’s launcher… an observation which was sarcastically noted by Apple pundit John Gruber. But that’s a good thing, in my mind. If you’ve got an Android Wear device, Bubble Cloud Launcher could be the closest you get to the experience of owning an Apple Watch, short of jumping ship.