Having some issues getting my Galaxy Watch 3 setup with my Pixel 7 running GrapheneOS.
It gets stuck with the watch saying "Check your phone to complete setup" and the phone saying "Finishing up... This might take a few minutes". I left it like this for an hour. It seems like some communication is going through, but perhaps some of it is being blocked, just not sure what.

A couple of things I've tried are:

  • Giving unrestricted Battery and Nearby Device permission to "Galaxy Wearable", "Galaxy Watch3 Plugin", "Samsung Accessory Service", "Google Play Services" and "Google Services Framework".
  • Disable "Exploit protection compatibility mode" in "Galaxy Watch3 Plugin" to work around a crash.
  • Installing "Samsung Health" because it was mentioned in the logs.

Still no luck.

Samsung Health refused to start and showed the error "Can't open app. Go to Settings > User and change your user profile to Owner. Or close your security app and try to open this app again.".
I have these installed in a "Google" profile so that I can shut all these apps down when I don't need them. I have several profiles and my Owner profile is empty.
Logs are quite noisy so it's hard to narrow it down to whatever the next error may be.

Any ideas?

I don't know for sure, but it does sound like it may require you to use the Owner profile for this to work.

Confirmed that it works in the Owner Profile.
Samsung Pay seems to be the only thing not working - which is expected because of the Safety Net limitations.

    jroddev

    So, it seems like setup must be done in Owner. After that, though, will the watch receive notifications from whichever profile you're using? I also don't use Owner profile and am wondering if the Galaxy Watch would work for me while using my "primary" User profile.

      2 months later

      jroddev

      Cool but I wasn't asking about the watch's behavior when changing profiles.

      It was stated that the watch will work with the Owner profile. My question was, will it ALSO work with a User profile?

      I don't see why it wouldn't but it would be great to confirm..

      Unrelated question, do you have network access for the samsung apps enabled? Do you have the full functionality of the watch when denying internet access for the apps?

      Im not sure if my experience with the Watch4 will translate, but I've found the following:

      • You can pair it and use it in another profile, but it is extremely flaky and the connection never recovers after the first disconnect. Best use it in the owner profile, its actually pretty solid once you do.
      • SHealth is not mandatory, it even gracefully removes the entry in the Galaxy wearable app
      • Only Play services and the Samsung apps need nearby devices permission. (It will refuse to connect if you deny them later)
      • Samsung Pay actually works, it doesn't query safteynet, but rather a library called "AppShield" which blocks access due to the "Secure App Spawning" option. You'll need to disable it temporarily to add cards etc, but seems fine once it is set up to reenable. There were some other apps that had this issue, mostly Korean financial apps I think. Makes sense given Samsung's home country.
      a year later

      I have found that Galaxy Watches that require a specific plug in don't work well or not at all in GrapheneOS.
      The only Samsung watch that I have fully working without any Google services is the Gear S3 Classic. The only caveat is that you have to sign into your Samsung account for push notifications to work.
      The Gear series uses a software that wasn't built on GSF.