BluePadel for Android — User Manual

Applies to BluePadel Companion 1.2.0 and later for Android, paired with the BluePadel Wear OS watch app. Last updated 17 May 2026.

BluePadel Companion is the phone half of BluePadel. The watch does the live scoring, the phone stores your match history, surfaces your stats, and holds every per-installation setting that the watch follows. This manual walks through every screen, every tab, and every setting in the Android app.

01Requirements

• Phone — Android 8.0 Oreo or later (API 26+). Around 30 MB of free storage. Bluetooth on.
• Watch (optional) — Any Wear OS 3+ watch (Pixel Watch, Galaxy Watch 4 / 5 / 6 / 7, TicWatch Pro 5 and later, Mobvoi, Fossil). The phone app works on its own — you can browse, review, and export matches without a watch — but you'll need one for live scoring.
• Google account — the watch and phone must be paired through the standard Wear OS setup using the same Google account. BluePadel piggy-backs on that pairing.

02Install

1. On your Android phone, open Google Play and search for BluePadel.
2. Tap Install. Play installs BluePadel Companion on the phone, and if you have a paired Wear OS watch, automatically pushes the watch app too. Allow 30–60 seconds for the watch side to complete.
3. Open BluePadel from your app drawer or the Play Store "Open" button.

03First launch

On first open, BluePadel runs through a short welcome flow:

1. Language — BluePadel uses your phone's system language by default. Tap a flag to override (you can also change this later in Settings).
2. Theme — System / Light / Dark. Defaults to System.
3. Handedness — Right or Left. This is used by the watch's shot classifier to label forehand vs backhand correctly.
4. Permissions — Android may ask for Bluetooth permissions if you're on Android 12+, so the app can detect your paired watch. Approve to enable the Watch tab status display.

The welcome flow runs only once. You can change everything it sets later, in the Settings tab.

04App layout

BluePadel Companion uses a bottom navigation bar with four tabs:

The top-app bar shows the current tab name and a refresh icon where relevant (Watch tab, History tab).

05Watch tab

The Watch tab is the first thing you'll land on after installation. It shows the live status of your watch pairing:

Pull down to refresh the status. A small "Last seen" timestamp under the status pill tells you when the watch last checked in.

Identifying your watch

When connected, the Watch tab shows the watch's model, BluePadel watch-app version, and battery percentage. Useful if you have more than one Wear OS watch paired and want to confirm which one BluePadel is talking to.

06History tab

The History tab is a chronological list of every match you've played, newest at the top.

Filter window

Three pill buttons across the top of the list filter what's visible:

• Day — matches from today. Tap the date to step backwards or forwards a day at a time.
• Month — matches in the current calendar month. Tap the month label to pick a different one.
• Year — every match this year. Tap the year to switch.

Whatever you've selected here also scopes the Stats tab — so picking Month on History gives you the matching month's stats too.

Pull to refresh

Pull the list down to fetch any newly synced matches from the watch. Matches normally arrive automatically over the Wearable Data Layer the moment the watch ends a match, but pull-to-refresh forces the listener to drain its queue.

Match rows

Each row in the list shows, in this order:

• An avatar tile colour-coded green (win) or grey (loss).
• The match label — "Mixed doubles", "Singles", "Mexicano", or a friendly name if you've added partners.
• The day-of-week and duration.
• The set scores in monospace on the right.

Tap a row to open the match detail view (next section).

Multi-select & bulk delete

Long-press any row to enter multi-select mode — checkboxes appear on every row. Tap others to add them to the selection. The top app bar changes to show "N selected" with a Delete button. Tap the back arrow to exit multi-select without deleting.

Empty state

If the current filter window has no matches, you'll see "No matches yet" with a quick reminder to open the watch app to score one. The empty state respects the filter — broaden the filter (Year covers more than Day) before you panic.

07Match detail

Tap any row in History to open the full detail of that match. Top-to-bottom:

Result header

"We won" or "They won" in big Outfit type, with the per-set scores immediately under it in monospace (e.g., 6-3 4-6 10-7). Total duration on the right.

Match settings

A small grey strip listing the configuration of this match — Padel or Mexicano, best-of, deuce mode, super-tiebreak on/off, who served first, and which watch layout was used. Useful for remembering "what rules were we playing under?" two months later.

Health card

If the watch had health permissions granted at the time of the match, you'll see:

• HR min / max / avg — beats per minute over the match.
• Calories — kcal estimate from Google Fit / Health Services.
• Steps — total step count during the match.
• Distance — derived from steps and your stride length.
• Active time — total elapsed time minus stationary periods.

Shots card

If the watch had activity-recognition permission, the on-watch motion classifier writes a shots breakdown:

• Total shots
• Forehand / Backhand / Smash counts
• Average shots per rally

Forehand vs backhand labelling depends on your Handedness setting being correct — flip it under Settings → Handedness if every shot is coming back as the wrong wing.

Actions

A three-dot overflow menu at the top-right of the detail screen gives you:

• Share — exports the result as a text summary you can paste into chat ("Won 6-3 6-4 at Rosebank, 38 min").
• Delete — removes this match. Confirms with an undo snackbar so you can recover an accidental delete for 4 seconds.

08Stats tab

The Stats tab summarises your matches over the current History filter window. Tiles:

If you've granted health permissions and have shots data, two more tiles show below the core grid:

• Total active hours — sum of active-time across all matches in the window.
• Total shots — sum of all shots across all matches.

Change the filter on the History tab (Day / Month / Year) and the Stats tab updates the moment you switch back to it.

09Settings tab

The Settings tab is the single source of truth for everything your installation does. Settings sync to the watch automatically over the Wearable Data Layer on next reconnect — there's no manual "push to watch" button.

10Choose the watch layout

Settings → Match layout opens the skin picker. Each of the seven layouts is shown as a small live preview tile so you can see at a glance what the watch face will look like during a match.

Pick one and tap Apply. The next match you start on the watch uses the new layout. You can also change layouts mid-match from the watch's Settings — every skin maps to the same scoring state, so you don't lose a point.

11Themes

Three themes ship in the app: System, Light, and Dark. System follows your phone's day-night schedule and is the default. Light uses the BluePadel cream / blue palette; Dark uses ink-blue backgrounds with sky-blue accents.

Themes only affect the phone app. The watch always uses its dark-on-black palette to save AMOLED battery — the watch theme isn't user-configurable.

12Languages

BluePadel supports six languages out of the box:

• English
• Spanish (Español)
• Portuguese (Português)
• French (Français)
• Italian (Italiano)
• Afrikaans

On first launch BluePadel uses your phone's system language. To change it later, go to Settings → Language — every phone screen updates immediately, and the watch picks up the new language on next reconnect. The translation covers every screen: Rules, Warmup, Match, Summary, History, Stats, and Settings.

13Your data

Everything BluePadel stores about you lives in the app's private storage on the phone. Match records (scores, timestamps, health, shots), settings, and preferences — all local.

The app makes no network requests for analytics or telemetry. The only network activity is what Google Play does for app updates and what the Wear OS subsystem does for watch sync, neither of which BluePadel controls or sees data from.

See the Privacy Policy and Data Safety page for the full detail.

Exporting your data

The per-match Share action exports a text summary suitable for chat. A full data export (JSON of every match) is planned for a future release — if you need it sooner, email us and we'll send instructions for pulling the SQLite database off the phone using adb backup.

Deleting your data

Three options, in increasing severity:

• Delete one match — overflow menu in the match detail view.
• Delete many matches — long-press in History to enter multi-select, then Delete.
• Delete everything — uninstall the app. BluePadel stores nothing outside its private storage, so uninstalling removes every byte.

14Updates

App updates come through Google Play in the usual way. Each release ships the matching watch build together with the phone build, so updates land on both devices over the same auto-update cycle.

To check your current version: Settings → About → Version. The watch app version is shown beneath it when the watch is paired and reachable. If the two don't match (rare, but possible during a staged rollout), open Google Play and tap "Update all" — Play will pull the matching pair down.

15Troubleshooting

The Watch tab keeps saying "No watch detected"

Confirm your watch is paired in the Google Wear OS app on your phone, and that both devices are on the same Google account. Bluetooth must be on. Restart Google Play Services on both devices (Settings → Apps → Google Play Services → Storage → Clear cache). Open BluePadel and pull-to-refresh on the Watch tab.

A match was scored on the watch but didn't appear in History

Match data queues in the Wearable Data Layer when the phone is offline or out of range. Bring the watch within Bluetooth range, open BluePadel Companion, and pull-to-refresh History — the listener will drain the queue. Force-stopping and reopening the phone app also flushes the queue.

The match shows zero health or shots data

That match was scored without the necessary permissions on the watch. Open Settings → Apps → BluePadel on the watch and grant BODY_SENSORS (for HR) and ACTIVITY_RECOGNITION (for steps and shot detection). Future matches will include the data; the past match can't be backfilled.

Forehand and backhand counts are swapped

Your handedness is set incorrectly. Go to Settings → Handedness and flip it. The next match will label shots correctly. Already-completed matches keep their original labels — there's no retroactive relabel.

I changed the layout but the watch is still using the old one

The change syncs over the Wearable Data Layer on next reconnect. If the watch is connected, the layout updates within seconds. If the watch is out of range, the change applies as soon as it comes back into range. You can also force the sync by opening the watch app once — it pulls the latest settings from the phone on launch.

The phone app crashes on launch

Rare but the standard Android fix usually works: Settings → Apps → BluePadel → Storage → Clear cache. If that doesn't help, Clear data wipes the local match database — only do this as a last resort. Email us before you do.

I want to factory-reset the app

Settings → Apps → BluePadel → Storage → Clear data. This wipes everything — match history, settings, language preference — back to first-launch state. The watch app keeps its installed state but its match database also resets the next time it talks to the phone.

Need more help?

Email hello@bluepadel.co.za with your phone model, Android version, BluePadel version (Settings → About), and what's not working. Screenshots help.