Hi everyone,
I’m super excited to share this. It’s something I’ve been working on for the last few months and it’s finally coming to the App Store.
This is a new update for Sober Time’s iPhone app and all of these features are iOS features. It includes a brand new Sober Time WatchOS app, lightweight watch face widgets, more home widgets for your iPhone, the option to add your widgets to your iPhone lock screen, and more. All of these features are included in Sober Time Premium.
Watch OS support
The biggest new feature is WatchOS support. If you have an Apple Watch, you can now open the Sober Time app there to view your trackers. You can also set up various widgets (aka complications) on your watch faces.
Here’s what the Watch App looks like:
And here’s a watch face with the new widgets:
The Watch App will mimic whatever tracker setup you have in your Sober Time iPhone app. It syncs when you open the iPhone app and it can reach the Watch.
Home Screen Widgets
Sober Time already has a home screen widget, but 4.3 adds new widgets that you can use:
At the top you have the new savings widget, which tells you have much you’ve saved. It can track a specific addiction or all of them. In the bottom right you have the new circular day tracker. It is a more compact view than the full tracker widget. It will show you your day count (or hour count if it’s your first day) and the bar will fill up the closer you get to the day being complete.
Lock Screen Widgets
This is a relatively new iOS feature, and Sober Time’s widgets can also now be installed here.
At the top (next to the date) you have the new inline widget that is simply text showing you your day count. This one is also available on Watch.
Below the time you have the home widget, the circular widget and the savings widget.
Unfortunately the lock screen widgets have limitations applied by Apple, and they can’t be edited. So they will always default to the first addiction tracker you have in your app.
A new adaptive icon
Sober Time now has a liquid glass icon that can adapt to your iPhone’s home screen. It will go light, dark or tinted, depending on how you’ve set yours up!
Notes and reminders
- The Watch app gets its data from the iPhone app. The iPhone app is the autority and source of all data and the Watch app is simply a view of it. You don’t make any changes on the Watch app. Make changes on your iPhone app and it will sync to your Watch.
- The iPhone app syncs data with the Watch app whenever you open it and whenever you make changes to your data. The sync will happen immediately if your watch is reachable, otherwise it will queue it and it will happen the next time your Watch can be reached.
- If it’s the first time you set up your watch, you may see that it has no data. You can confirm this by tapping the info button in the Watch app and checking the last sync date. Just give it a minute to sync and try again.
- Widgets are not full apps. They don’t run constantly, so they won’t constantly be updated. Think of them as a quick snapshot view instead. They are recalculated and refreshed at an interval determined by your iPhone or Watch. This is an intentional limitation by Apple in order to conserve your system’s resources.
- Your widgets are not frozen or “stuck”. They just don’t refresh every second. They’ll refresh every few minutes as explained above. The idea is that you can glance at your widgets throughout the day to see roughly where you are for the day.
- For a full, live view, tap on any widget to open the Sober Time app. Apps do constantly refresh and recalculate while open, so you’ll always get the exact time.
- Opening the Sober Time iOS app will trigger an automatic refresh of all widgets (usually). It will also trigger a resync with your Watch app.
Along with these main features, the app also includes several small tweaks and adjustments. It’s currently in the process of being published and should be available in the next few days.
Happy holidays to everyone! And good luck with the start of the new year.
Robin