#watchkit

alderheart and larksong earn their full names.

sprucestep and sheetpaw die.

arnicapaw and pearlpaw are apprenticed to dewnose and greystripe.

shellkit dies.

One of my absolute *favorite* things in programming is making things talk to each other. It can be an utterly maddening task but when it goes right it feels like magic. 

Behold, watch-app and phone-app now sync the status between each other! 

The Prototype and Real Life

Earlier today I broke the watch app while I was playing around with data storage. My prototype basically just crashed every time I tried to start it. 

I shrugged this off at first until I wanted to remind myself to grab laundry out of the dryer, and I was ACTUALLY SAD it didn’t work. I can’t say I remember to use RightMeow all that often, but it’s useful enough that it made me sad when I didn’t have access to it and I’m utterly delighted by that.

Tommorow: 

Aww yeah Apptober has begun! I've been meaning to crack open WatchOS since my mom unloaded her Apple Watch on me, so I'm gonna start Apptober by creating a really simple watch app.

The Problem:

Do you ever do the thing where you wander into a room, forget what you're supposed to be doing there, then end up doing something completely different than what you went in there to do? I do that a lot (thanks ADHD!). 

And here’s where my silly apptober app comes in: I’ll create a watch app that will let me record what I’m supposed to be doing and then when I inevitably forget or get distracted, I can just check my what-am-I-doing-right-now-watch-app (name still in progress lol) and be reminded.

Requirements:

All the app has to do is:

allow me to enter a string of input (a short description of what I'm doing), preferably by dictating it

persist that data over any length of time

display that string later when I open the watch app again

allow me to overwrite that string with a new one when I start a new task

Today was a day filled with lethargy and family obligations, so I basically did the bare-minimum amount of coding possible: adding the ability to change the Right Meow status straight from the phone app. Ahh progress ;D

Tomorrow I’ll get this part all synced up with the watch app and watch extension.

Apptober: Day 4

Today was a short day. I added a Clear Status button to the app so it's easy to clear the current status. It’s kinda big and ugly but that’s ok for right now. Ahh, the peace of a clear conscience status bar.

I also ended up keeping "No Task Right Meow" as the empty state. After a while I got used to it and now it's kinda soothing. We'll see if it stays that way...

Interlude - The Prototype and Real Life 

On a side-note, RightMeow did help me remember that the reason I kept wandering into the kitchen last night was to make tea. Sure, I had to forget, wash the dishes, wander away, and then get frustrated before I remembered I made an app to help fix this problem, but second time was the charm. 

Other than being a hilarious project to work on during Apptober, RightMeow might actually help with tasks like cleaning or packing where I know I tend to get sidetracked as I move throughout the house and from task to task. I usually write the list of tasks I’m going to do on a whiteboard to help me keep on track, but it’s not like I can carry a whiteboard around all the time so I think having the current task right there on my wrist will probably be pretty useful. We’ll see :D

Tomorrow: SIRI INTEGRATION

The best time to research an unfamiliar API is probably not after you've had a beer and while your mom is visiting and playing Zelda Breath of the Wild in the background... but sometimes that's the best time you get, so SiriKit BEGIN.

For all INtents and Purposes

SiriKit is an interesting can of worms; it's definitely a lot more confined than I'd hoped. You can really only configure interactions with Siri as long as your app's functionality falls under certain predefined actions (the API calls these "intents"). These intents include functionality like “booking rides”, “taking notes”, “searching for photos”, and a few others. If your app doesn't fall explicitly in these domains of interactions? Whelp, either you gotta make one of those domains awkwardly work for you, or you gotta wait for Apple to expand their domains (HAHAHAHA).

Since I'm not immortal or even patient, I'm hoping the former option will work well enough and I'll be able to use the AddingNotes or AddingTasks intents for RightMeow (after all, Rightmeow is kinda like a task list with only one task).

TOMORROW

The last day or two I’ve been working on making the syncing of the status between phone and watch work better. Before, the status only transferred reliably when the app was open on both the phone and the watch at the same time - but no more! Background transfers to the rescue!

As you can see in the crappy gif below, setting the status on the watch immediately sends a message to the phone in the background, so when we open the RightMeow app on the phone the status is already synced: 

This also works in reverse - setting the status on the phone will send updates to the watch app even if it’s not currently open. If you have the RightMeow complication installed the status gets sent at a higher priority so that the watch will know to refresh the watch face in a reasonable amount of time:

There is a limited number of times per day that Apple allows data to be transferred from the phone to update the watch complication, but so far I haven’t managed to hit the cap (I think it’s like 50?). We’ll see how well it holds up :D

I’m really liking this feature because setting the watch status from my phone has been super useful in situations where dictating my current task to my watch would be awkward (basically anytime where I’m around people and wouldn’t want to explain why I need my watch to remember what I’m currently doing or about to do). 

Tomorrow:

Apptober: Days 24/25

Woot, I think I’m happy enough with where the RightMeow app is at that I can call it mostly complete! It’s still a little rough around the edges, but it does what I want it do: namely, allowing me to put a reminder on my watch face of the thing I’m supposed to be doing but got distracted from (because damnit ADHD). I particularly like using it for projects that make me fetch things from across the house (like cleaning or packing), but it’s nice to be able to put anything there, too. Sometimes I just like my watch to tell me that I’m awesome or to remind me to appreciate my surroundings.

A Recap on the Fun Things I learned/implemented doing RightMeow:

learned how to build a native WatchKit app that allows users to input a task they don't want to forget right on their watch via dictation (or scribbles!)

built a complication to put the task on the watch face (this is my fav feature by far)

Implemented the Siri Intents extension to give (VERY limited) support for Siri set the status (most disappointing feature TBH - Siri understands me inconsistently at best and not at all at worst)

Used AppGroups to share data between the phone app and its Siri extension (super easy to implement if you’re using NSUserDefaults to store data)

Used WatchConnectivity to sync the status between watch and phone apps (this was especially fun to do)

Things I might still get around to:

The phone app could use a face-lift

Any work at all on the icon or art assets

Maybe I'll list it in the App Store, just in time to be a month late honoring ADHD awareness month 😂

Up Next:

While I've still got some things left to do with RightMeow, most of them are kinda boring and I've been thinking about devoting the remaining days of Apptober to something new and shiny.

I've been thinking I might build a basic AO3 reader app or something since I've had to take a lot of trips lately and it makes me fantasize about reading Dishonored fanfics in style (and also damnit Safari do you have to try to refresh tabs I've already loaded when you KNOW I don't have wifi access?!?!).