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The Wear OS 4 update seems to have brought an annoying bug to Samsung smartwatches. Gboard doesn’t work in some apps after installing the big update. The Galaxy Watch 4, Watch 5, and Watch 6 all appear to be affected. Google Keep, Google Contacts, Samsung Reminder, Samsung Alarm, TickTick, Todoist, Bring, and Weargram are among the apps known to have this problem.
Wear OS 4 introduced a Gboard bug to the Galaxy Watch lineup
Smsung’s Galaxy Watch 6 series was the first to get Wear OS 4. The new smartwatches shipped with the latest version of Google’s smartwatch platform out of the box, with the Korean firm offering its One UI 5 Watch skin on top. It later updated the Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 5 to the new version. The update brought a handful of new features and improvements to the watches.
However, it appears a bug snuck through undetected with this update. Over the past few weeks, several Galaxy Watch users have noticed that Gbboard doesn’t open in some apps. Usually, the keyboard app shows up on the screen as soon as you tap on a text field in any app. However, when using any of the aforementioned apps, tapping on the text field shows a black screen with no keyboard.
You can go back, so the device doesn’t freeze nor does the app crash. However, Gboard doesn’t work. Switching to Samsung Keyboard as the default keyboard app solves the problem, but the latter doesn’t offer a full QWERTY layout. The old-school T9 keyboard isn’t as convenient to use. Gboard, meanwhile, works in other apps such as Google Messages, WhatsApp, Google Maps, Play Store, Samsung Internet, etc.
Several Galaxy Watch 4, Watch 5, and Watch 6 users have complained about this issue on Reddit and official Google forums. We checked a few models here at Android Headlines and could replicate the issue. However, it’s unclear whether the bug is present on Gboard or the apps. The problem isn’t limited to third-party apps, as Gboard fails to open in some Google and Samsung apps as well.
Switching to Samsung Keyboard is a temporary workaround
As of this writing, Neither Google nor Samsung has announced a fix for this issue. That means switching to Samsung Keyboard is the only workaround. That’s if you regularly use the keyboard in any of the affected apps. Otherwise, you can continue using Gboard as it works in most other apps. To switch the default keyboard app for your watch, go to Settings > General > Input > Keyboard list and default > Default keyboard. You can also do this through the Galaxy Wearable app on your connected smartphone.