You can now pair an Apple Watch with Android, but there's a big catch

Apple isn’t exactly famous for making its gadgets play nicely with Android. The Apple Watch is a particularly stubborn example, which can only be paired with an iPhone — at least as far as Apple is concerned. But an enterprising developer has found a way around that restriction, managing to pair an Apple Watch Ultra 2 directly with an Android phone.

As highlighted in an X post by @0x0SojalSec, the open-source project, Apple Watch Companion, does more than simply connect the two devices. It allows the Apple Watch to be paired and activated without an iPhone, while also offering some basic management options. You can check battery information, manage watch faces, and fiddle with certain settings. However, before you get excited, it’s still a long way from the full Apple Watch experience, and there are some caveats to consider.

For starters, you’ll need a rooted Android phone with Magisk, and the developer has only verified the software on a specific OnePlus 13 with an Apple Watch Ultra 2 running watchOS 26.2. Plenty of features are still missing or incomplete, including calling and health data integration.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Android-friendly Apple Watch solutions. Several Chinese phone manufacturers have been chipping away at Apple’s restrictions, including HUAWEI and vivo, while Xiaomi has also been getting involved. The catch with these solutions is that you still need an iPhone to set up the watch in the first place. That’s what makes this new project particularly interesting.

So don’t rush out and buy an Apple Watch for your Galaxy just yet. This is very much a proof of concept rather than something most Android users could realistically use, but it’ll be interesting to see how much further the developer can take it.