Widgets – A Replacement for the macOS Dashboard 🎛

Soon! The launch is planned for January 1, 2020.
Sure, I could have launched it now, but I felt like doing something festive. :partying_face:


Happy New Year!

The link should work now.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/apparatuses/id1473426741

The video looks great. Maybe Hype has a future as a non-linear editor? :thinking:

2 Likes

Just a heads up…

If you already bought Widgets — but you didn’t buy Apparatuses yet — maybe wait about a month. I’m planning to link up the two apps.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to get the “Universal Purchase” feature to work, but that’s the plan. I’m going to try setting it up when Xcode 11.4 is out of beta.

Sadly, I don't think I can merge this...

Multiple App Records. If your app is currently available on multiple platforms through separate app records, please note that app records can’t be merged.

Offering Universal Purchase - Support - Apple Developer

The name "Widgets" isn't available on iOS, and I don't want to call the macOS version "Apparatuses".

So, if you're thinking about turning your Hype project into an app, having a name that's available both on Mac and iOS might be a good thing.

In general though, Universal Purchase is a neat feature. Did Tumult get "Hype" on iOS? :thinking:

1 Like

If you're working on apps, here's some of what I learned with the latest update.

  1. WOW — Both app updates were approved without rejection. Surprising! It was fast too. It was less than a day for both. (I messed up the bundle ID for the macOS version. I think I was experimenting with Catalyst. If not for that problem, both apps probably would have launched on the same day.)
  2. There's a lot going on in Apple land... Keynote - WWDC20 - Videos - Apple Developer ...I was surprised to see Apple focusing on widgets again — and it was amongst the first technical features presented.
  3. I like how converting widgets to an app compressed the dictionary. I thought it was going to add about 10 MB to the file size. Instead, it only went from 4.8 MB to 8.6 MB. That's less than half of what I expected — NICE!

So yeah, if you're working on an app, Apple is clearly moving in the direction of making apps work across platform. Catalyst is likely to play a bigger role... Mac Catalyst Overview - Apple Developer ...but even if you don't do that, Apple Silicon basically moves iPad / iPhone apps to the Mac anyway. The switch to Apple Silicon is a big change.

I ended up not using this, as I'm not sure if I could use it for this app. Instead, I used WordNet — https://wordnet.princeton.edu — If you're looking to build a Hype project with a dictionary, that data might be helpful to you.

I'm sharing some more information to the app makers in the Tumult forms.

Alas, WidgetKit doesn't appear to be Hype friendly. Hype is about animated and interactive content. WidgetKit is "glanceable" content, mainly created with SwiftUI. Essentially, they two are polar opposites.

I couldn't even use Hype to make a nice GIF from the promo video. It didn't look very good. Here's an attempt with animated PNG...

gif-test

The image breaks up. It's also cut in approximately half, as the original is a seamless loop.

Anyway, I like Apple's new system. Surprisingly, the "Calculator" widget in the Notification Center is gone now too. Apple is very serious about "Glanceable" content. I understand the logic. They don't want mini-app. So, it's not quite "sherlocking" from Apple, as the Widgets app is more focused towards interactive mini apps... and now glanceable widgets too. That's two types of widgets in one app — nice!

Interestingly,
While writing the scriptable widget,

I noticed that Pythonista.app also can let users make widgets.

One of Pyhonistas examples is an interactive calculator.
Which completely threw me on how these widgets work

1 Like

WOW, that's a working calculator? I thought that was impossible.

Hey, and nice Tumult Forums widget. :smile:

Whew, just when I thought I was catching up, it looks like there's A LOT more work to do. HA HA! :laughing:

1 Like

It is and so did I..
Did not dive into how they do it but having a think about it as I write this, I assume their widget talks directly to their app and the app redraws the widget directly on taps and results.
This would especially make sense if swiftUI is being used since views and redraws are very very cheap

1 Like

That's how I keep the "Thermal State" information updated. When a temperature change occurs, the main "Widgets" app reloads the "System Stats" widget in the Notification Center.

If that's how the calculator works, and that seems like a good guess, I suspect Apple would crack down on that. From what I've read, if your app makes too many reload requests, the operating system starts ignoring those requests.

1 Like

For those of you that didn't like the original icon, maybe you'll like the new one. :blush:

widgets-icon

3 Likes