FAQ

Is WristMSG free?

Two contacts are free, permanently. Unlocking all five is a one-time $2.99 purchase — not a subscription, no account required. Everything else works the same on both tiers. Two contacts is enough to confirm the app works with your own conversations before paying anything.

Do I need the phone app?

Yes. The watch app is a remote control for the phone app, which is what reads your Google Chat notifications. The watch will tell you if the phone app is missing or unreachable, and can send you straight to it.

Which watches and phones does it work with?

Wear OS watches paired to an Android phone. Tested on Pixel Watch 2 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic with Pixel and Galaxy phones. (iPhone is not supported — Google Chat’s notification reply path does not exist on iOS.)

Does WristMSG read my messages or send them anywhere?

Your messages never leave your devices. WristMSG has no server and no analytics. It reads Google Chat notifications on your phone and passes replies back through Google’s own reply mechanism — the same path your phone uses when you reply from the notification shade.

Which Google account does WristMSG use? (Multiple accounts)

Short answer: all of them. WristMSG shows your Google Chat conversations from every Google account signed in to Google Chat on your phone — and replies are always sent from the account that received the message.

How it works

WristMSG doesn’t sign in to a Google account of its own. It works by reading your incoming Google Chat notifications, so a conversation appears in WristMSG once you’ve received a message in it — no matter which of your accounts it came to.

• The account you used to join testing only controls who can install the app. It does not limit which conversations show up.
• When you reply from your watch, the message is sent from the account that owns that conversation — automatically and correctly. You never reply “as the wrong account.”

Good to know (current limitation)

If you use multiple accounts, your conversations appear in one combined list with no per-account label yet. For most people this is seamless, but if you have the same contact across two accounts they may be hard to tell apart. Per-account labels are on our list for a future update — for now, the optional label feature (tap the ✏️ on any contact) lets you tag them yourself (e.g. “Work”).

How long does a conversation stay Ready?

With Keep-Alive on and both WristMSG and Google Chat set to Unrestricted battery usage, conversations stay repliable for days at a time — we’ve seen 3+ days without a drop in testing. The only things that reset Ready status are a phone restart (reply tokens live in RAM and don’t survive a reboot) or an OEM task killer that bypasses Android’s standard battery controls.

See the Reliability page for the full explanation and setup steps.