com.samsung.android.app.watchmanagerstub Copy

Labelled "Wearable Manager Installer" on every device in this sample and in Samsung's own Galaxy S20 application list, this is the small preinstalled stub that puts the full Galaxy Wearable app on a Galaxy phone when one is needed. Samsung describes Galaxy Wearable itself as the app that "connects the wearable device to your mobile device" and "manages and monitors wearable device features and applications", and distributes it through the Play Store, the Galaxy Store and the App Store; the stub is the on-device half of that arrangement and is a separate package from the companion app itself, which Samsung's Note9 application list records as com.samsung.android.app.watchmanager under the label "Samsung Gear". Unlike most components documented here it is user-facing: this site records user-facing observations of it. The permissions recorded here match the installer reading of Samsung's own label: INSTALL_PACKAGES and DELETE_PACKAGES, BLUETOOTH_PRIVILEGED and Samsung's own wearable and easy-pairing permissions, QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES, INTERNET and SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW. Samsung does not publish package-level documentation for the stub, so read the exact division of labour between it and Galaxy Wearable as inferred from the label and permissions rather than as documented behaviour. Version note: the package is long-standing but its presentation changed. Samsung's Oreo-era Note9 application list records it with no friendly label at all, at version 1.1.15-13032; the Android 11 S20 list records it as "Wearable Manager Installer" at 2.1.01.20006, which is the label current devices here still report, at versions 2.1.01.22002 through 2.1.01.26005 with a target SDK from API 29 to API 36. No source establishes a change in its role across Android releases beyond that relabelling. For Android Enterprise, EMM and kiosk use this is a package worth an explicit decision rather than a default. A component that holds INSTALL_PACKAGES and privileged Bluetooth access, and whose Samsung-given label describes it as an installer for a consumer companion app, is not something every kiosk or single-purpose deployment wants active. Deal with it through policy rather than by hand: where the aim is to stop wearable pairing altogether, the Android Management API has a bluetoothDisabled policy, which turns Bluetooth off rather than merely restricting it (the neighbouring bluetoothConfigDisabled policy only disables configuring Bluetooth, so it is not a way of preventing pairing). Samsung separately documents enabling or disabling a specific system app from the EMM console. No disable rating is given below, because no source sets out what stops working if the stub itself is turned off, and in particular whether it makes any difference on a device where Galaxy Wearable is already installed. Test that on your own hardware rather than assuming it either way.

• Galaxy S20 5G (G981U) application list - Samsung Knox CC Mode documentation →
• Galaxy Note9 (N960N) application list - Samsung Knox CC Mode documentation →
• Galaxy Wearable (Watch) - Samsung Support →
• Policies reference (bluetoothDisabled) - Android Management API →
• Enable or disable a specific system app - Knox Manage - Samsung Knox Documentation →
• Package provenance for com.samsung.android.app.watchmanagerstub - Android System App Database →

• Signed by the device maker's own signing key (Samsung), so it is an OEM preinstall, but 2 different certificates appear across the fleet, so OEMs ship their own builds of it. It also signs the Android framework, so it is a platform-level key on its device(s). Inferred from the certificate appearing only on Samsung devices (508 packages, 10196 observations).
• Its largest observed manifest declares 25 permissions: 4 runtime (user-granted), 6 signature or system-level, 5 install-time and 10 vendor or uncatalogued.
• APK size ranges from 0.6 MB to 4.5 MB across the reporting device profiles, so the build differs substantially between them.