sindresorhus
commented
4 months ago My reply:
This is still a huge issue when developing widgets…
- Without an ID, it's impossible to save some state for a specific widget for interactive widgets.
- I would like a better first use experience, so the user adds a widget, then taps it, the app opens and receives the widget ID, and then creates a new note based on that ID. Right now, I need to instruct the user to edit the widget and write their own identifier, which is not very user-friendly.
- It would be useful to refresh specific widgets instead of all of a kind, which would save energy.
- I have an app that shows a random photo. I have a button that lets the user skip to the next photo. I want to make sure the new randomly picked photo is not the same as the one currently shown in the widget, but there is no way to store unique state per widget.
Description
Currently, on iOS 14.0.1, if a user adds two widgets of the same type, size, and configuration, the widgets receive the same identifier and hence share snapshots, making it impossible to show different content in each. This feels very backwards and I’m assuming it’s a bug.
Reproduce:
Many widget apps (including the one mentioned above) currently work around this bug by adding a “Name”/“ID” field in the widget configuration screen where the user gives the widget a unique name, which results in the widget configuration being different, and hence gives the widget a unique identifier. This is more of a hack though, and not very user-friendly.
If this is not a bug, I would strongly recommend making it possible to force the widgets to be unique programmatically. This is what the user expects.
I have gotten countless of emails about confused users blaming my app for not working properly because multiple widgets show the same content.