Need to debug your Wear OS Watch for development purpose, or to boot into bootloader or recovery mode? Well, you can do that by enabling ADB debugging.

Wear OS has a similar setup to enable ADB debugging like the one on Android phones and tablets. You first have to enable the hidden developer options menu from Settings » About phone and then enable ADB debugging from there.

Enable ADB Debugging over Bluetooth on Wear OS
  1. Go to Settings on your watch.
  2. Select About from Settings and then tap 7 times on Build number to enable developer options.
  3. Swipe right on the screen to go back to Settings. You should now see a new item Developer options on the Settings screen, select it.
  4. Once in Developer options menu, enable ADB Debugging and Bluetooth debugging.
  5. Now on your Android phone/tablet, open Wear OS app > tap the menu on top right > select Settings.
  6. Enable Debugging over Bluetooth. You’ll see a status 
    Host: disconnected
Target: connected
  7. Now connect your Android phone/tablet to the PC. Then open a command window on PC, and run the following commands: 
    adb forward tcp:4444 localabstract:/adb-hub
adb connect localhost:4444

    └ Make sure you’ve ADB and Fastboot setup on your PC.

  8. Wear OS Companion app should now show the following status: 
    Host: connected
Target: connected
  9. You can now use ADB with the following format: 
     adb -s localhost:4444 <command>

    OR, if there are other devices connected over TCP/IP, you can just use the following format:

     adb -e <command>

That’s all. ADB Debugging should is enabled on your Wear OS Watch now. Just make sure you use the adb commands in the above-specified format only.

Happy Androiding!