If you're the proud owner of a Gear S2 smartwatch, made with care by Korean giant Samsung, you'll understand the frustration with downloading apps when it comes to your smartwatch. Whereas you can download apps from Samsung's own Galaxy Apps Store for Samsung devices exclusively, you've had to visit the Gear Manager app in order to search for Gear S2 apps. Two stores for two devices, you've told yourself; we can't blame you. It has been a bit unintuitive, but Samsung is now changing this to make your mobile experience that much easier.
The Korean giant announced yesterday that it has decided to merge the Gear S2 apps with the Galaxy Apps Store apps so that you can now visit the Galaxy Apps Store for all your mobile app needs (whether for your smartwatch or smartphone). "Starting March 31, Gear Apps will be consolidated with Galaxy Apps...As such, Gear users can browse customized watch faces, health trackers and information streams directly from Galaxy Apps via the Gear tab. In addition to providing an improved search function, the integration allows for maximized convenience. No longer will users have to download from two separate platforms -- Galaxy Apps has all their needs covered," the company said yesterday in a statement from its own newsroom.
The Galaxy Apps Store update that brings the Gear S2 smartwatch apps to the store weighs in at a small 12.90MB, and brings the Galaxy Apps Store to its latest version, version 4.1.01-14. You should, after the update, find the "Gear" tab at the top of the Galaxy Apps page, to the right of "Exclusives" and to the left of the top apps category.
You should find this update available the next time you open the Galaxy Apps Store app. Let us know if you've updated your Galaxy Apps Store app and whether you like now finding a "Gear" tab in the Galaxy Apps Store instead of visiting the Gear Manager app to download new watch apps.