Process of approving watchfaces

[TonyA999]

I think I'm not the first person to face the process of approving a watch face, when your watch face is not accepted because it looks like an existing watch face. At the same time, we see repeated clockfaces from other developers in the sections. Give an example.

Due to the fact that this clockface content is not different or does not offer significant new value compared to existing apps (VD Byke), we have declined your submission.
VD Byke
https://gallery.fitbit.com/details/3e53a1d8-2dc9-44d3-91b0-1754c5a25a03
Similar to this watch faces
https://gallery.fitbit.com/details/64bee843-bb48-459a-9a9f-27fd7312f7be
https://gallery.fitbit.com/details/ddfe8eef-e824-43b9-a8b3-e4ca595e3b17
https://gallery.fitbit.com/details/7b8f346e-4bfc-41fd-8eb9-ece173ecdf07
https://gallery.fitbit.com/details/e7faed7b-ffff-40ba-8919-f3f8ab6ae145
https://gallery.fitbit.com/details/fda910e1-c36c-4bbd-bda2-ac13f089a87b
All these watchfaces were not accepted

And here is one of the many examples that we see in the gallery that fitbit accepts identical watchfaces.
https://gallery.fitbit.com/details/66456f8b-c818-437c-b262-3deb6ee83bea
https://gallery.fitbit.com/details/bb928786-5ebc-452d-b240-94649436778a
https://gallery.fitbit.com/details/875ead13-a3bd-4e9a-a85f-18dafe571c8f
https://gallery.fitbit.com/details/f4bb7542-2a72-4161-a1a0-8927a6c89193

Maybe my watchfaces are very beautiful and checking fitbit employees just eliminate their competitors? 🙂
And there are many such examples. Why are there different rules for different developers? Why in the sections of the Always-On Display can only be accessed by privileged developers? And they are there to sell their watchfaces, and not just show us an example. There is also a Staff Picks section, where developers are also privileged. Do they display their dials for free? No, they sell them. Not only do I think that the rules should be the same for all developers. I hope the guys from Google will make the same rules for everyone in this big fitbit family.

[JonFitbit]

I'm not on the review team, but I'll try to help with some of the questions.

The review team have a set of guidelines that they follow, a more detailed version of https://dev.fitbit.com/legal/app-gallery-guidelines/

The significant value rejection relates to the Copycats section of the guidelines:

• Your App should be different from existing content and offer significant new value compared to existing Apps.

The gallery is being flooded with very basic clock faces which follow the same criteria:

• Stock image
• Basic functionality
• Is not free

I can't comment on why specific clocks were rejected, and others were approved, but it's likely that the same developer has already produced the same clock dozens of times. Historically things were not checked with the same attention to detail, so existing clocks may not be suitable comparisons.

See also, Spam - https://dev.fitbit.com/legal/app-gallery-guidelines/#spam

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@TonyA999 wrote:

Maybe my watchfaces are very beautiful and checking fitbit employees just eliminate their competitors? 🙂
And there are many such examples. Why are there different rules for different developers? Why in the sections of the Always-On Display can only be accessed by privileged developers? And they are there to sell their watchfaces, and not just show us an example. There is also a Staff Picks section, where developers are also privileged. Do they display their dials for free? No, they sell them. Not only do I think that the rules should be the same for all developers. I hope the guys from Google will make the same rules for everyone in this big fitbit family.

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1. Not sure why you mean by this, the review team are not content creators.
2. AOD was explained in the announcement blog post, we're still working towards making it more widely available
3. Staff Picks are selected by a different team to the reviewers and are based on downloads, reviews, social media visibility etc.

I hope this helps clarify some things.