MD335 Hybrid watch face

Review by eFreeware

A watch face is the one piece of software you look at more than any other, and most of them fall into one of two camps: clean analog dials that tell you almost nothing, or data-heavy digital layouts that read like a fitness dashboard. MD335 Hybrid is an attempt to sit between the two, keeping a traditional handset while putting health and status readouts around it.

It comes from Matteo Dini MD Watch Faces. The app costs $2.29, carries no ads and offers no in-app purchases, so the price you see is the whole cost. It has passed 50,000 installs and holds a 4.7 average from 1,944 ratings, which for a paid watch face is a healthy signal. It first appeared in March 2024 and was updated in August 2025.

If you have ever bought a face that looked striking in the store screenshots and then turned out to be awkward to configure, you already know why a review of something this small is worth reading. The interesting questions here are what the face actually shows, how much you can change, and what your watch needs to be running before any of it works.

Analog hands with a data layer underneath

The core idea is a hybrid dial: physical-style hands for the time, with the rest of the screen given over to information. You get the date and the day, battery level, heart rate with interval readings, and a step count with daily goals. The time format follows whatever your phone is set to, so a 12-hour or 24-hour clock is not something you have to configure separately.

The hands themselves are part of the customization rather than a fixed element. You can change their style, and you can hide them entirely when you want an unobstructed view of the data underneath. That single option does more for the face's flexibility than it might sound, because it lets the same design work as a conventional analog watch in one moment and a readout panel in the next.

The always-on display has two modes, minimal and full. Which one you pick is a trade between how much information stays visible when the screen dims and how much of the dial remains lit. The developer notes that some features may not be available on every watch, which is worth keeping in mind.

Shortcuts you can reach without digging

Four app shortcuts are built in and preset: calendar, battery, a heart rate measurement, and alarms. These are the tasks you are most likely to want from the wrist, and having them a tap away rather than three menus deep is the sort of thing that decides whether a face stays installed. A fifth shortcut is left for you to assign as you like, which covers the one app you personally open most often.

Because the presets are fixed, the shortcut row is only partly yours to shape. If your habits run to a music player, a timer or a messaging app, the single customizable slot carries most of that weight. It is a reasonable split for a face that also has to fit complications on screen, but it does mean you should think about which app deserves that slot before you commit.

Shortcuts and complications are different things here, and it helps to keep them apart. A shortcut launches an app; a complication displays a piece of data. The face gives you one of the former to define and three of the latter, and the two systems do not overlap.

Three complications, and the apps behind them

The three customizable complications are where the face earns its keep for anyone who wants their wrist to answer questions at a glance. The developer lists weather, barometer, distance walked, calories, UV index and chance of rain among the possibilities, along with world clock and other health data. You choose what fills each slot, so the same face can lean toward fitness on one watch and toward weather on another.

There is a practical catch the developer is upfront about: complications are external apps rather than part of the watch face, and the developer has no control over them. Some data, distance walked being the example given, may require an additional complication app to be installed on the watch if one is not already there. It does mean the finished look depends on what else you have set up.

This is the part of the face most likely to need a little patience. If a slot shows nothing, it may be worth checking what is supplying that data type. Building the layout you want is a matter of matching each slot to a complication your watch can actually feed.

Colors, themes and the look you end up with

Customization goes well beyond swapping data. There is a dark and light theme, and separate color controls for the time, the battery level, the goal level, the markers and the general palette. It means the design can be tuned to match a band, a phone theme or simply a preference for low-contrast dials.

The process is the standard Wear OS one: touch and hold the display, then choose the customize option. The developer recommends doing this directly on the watch rather than through the phone. On Samsung watches in particular, the editor built into the Samsung Wearable app struggles with faces as complex as this one, and the developer is clear that this is a limitation of that editor rather than of the watch face. Until Samsung addresses it, customizing on the watch is the route that works.

What your watch needs first

Before any of this matters, your watch has to meet the requirement. MD335 Hybrid runs on Wear OS 4 and newer, meaning API level 33 or above. The developer lists compatibility with Pixel Watch and Galaxy Watch 4 through 9, plus the Ultra and Ultra 2. If your watch is on an older Wear OS release, the face will not be an option.

The price is a one-time $2.29 with no ads and no in-app purchases, so there is nothing to unlock later and nothing to dismiss on the dial. That is a straightforward arrangement, and for a face you may look at a hundred times a day it is easy to justify against the cost of a coffee.

The trade-offs are mostly about scope. This is a watch face, not a fitness platform: it displays heart rate, steps and goal progress, and it can show data from complications. The shortcut row is largely preset, and the complication slots are only as good as the apps feeding them. None of that is a flaw so much as the shape of the thing.

A face for people who want both hands and numbers

The clearest audience is someone who likes the look of an analog watch but does not want to give up glanceable data. If you check your step count, battery and heart rate through the day and still prefer a dial with hands to a grid of digits, the hybrid approach here is exactly the compromise you are looking for. The color and theme controls add enough range to keep it from feeling like everyone else's watch.

It also suits tinkerers. Three complication slots, a customizable shortcut, changeable hands and separate color channels reward someone willing to spend a few minutes setting things up on the watch itself, and the ability to hide the hands gives the layout a second personality.

The Galaxy Watch owner who wants to configure everything from the phone is the one who will feel friction, since the Samsung editor's trouble with complex faces pushes that work onto the watch. And anyone on a Wear OS version below 4 simply cannot run it. For everyone else in the Wear OS 4 camp, this is a considered, well-supported paid face.

The case for paying for MD335 Hybrid

MD335 Hybrid earns its $2.29 by doing the hybrid format properly: real hands, a genuine data layer, three complication slots and enough color control to make the result feel like yours. The absence of ads and in-app purchases keeps the arrangement simple, and it was updated in August 2025.

If you are on a Galaxy Watch and expect the Samsung companion app to handle everything, go in knowing that the developer points you to the watch's own customization screen instead. Within those bounds, this is one of the more complete hybrid faces you can buy.

What's new

Companion App updated with target SDK 35.