Originally posted by **ufgkirk** October 13, 2023
I recently got an Apple Watch (knowing full well that Element does not "support" it, however also knowing that notifications will still show up on it).
I have noticed that Google Voice allows me to reply to text messages directly from the watch, even though Google Voice is not "compatible" and does not install itself as a watch app. You can verify the lack of apparent Apple Watch support here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-voice/id318698524
I believe this may be how this is implemented: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/watchos-apps/adding-actions-to-notifications-on-watchos
I definitely understand that developing a full companion watch app, as proposed in [Issue #5610](https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios/issues/5610) would be a large investment of development resources, however I think it is worth it to look into the above documentation and see if it might be possible to add support to reply to messages from the watch. I don't believe a full watch app needs to be developed to do that, and this implementation may be more trivial. I don't think a "real" watch app is even needed if this is implemented...
Thanks for your attention and hopefully someone will be willing to implement this. :)
Discussed in https://github.com/vector-im/element-meta/discussions/2138