Add Home Screen Widgets

thehale / BinaryClock

A nerdy way to tell time on Android/iOS 🕓

https://binaryclock.jhale.dev

Mozilla Public License 2.0

3 stars 1 forks source link

Add Home Screen Widgets #12

Open thehale opened 1 year ago

thehale commented 1 year ago

It would be amazing to have a Home Screen widget for the clock so that I could see the time in Binary without having to open the app.

Some resources that seem relevant:

React Native App Extensions
- Only for iOS. Also calls out the 16 MB RAM limitation for widgets which React Native quickly consumes.
React Native: How To Build a Home Screen Widget for iOS and Android
- Spoiler alert: React Native can’t be used on the widget itself.
HOW TO BUILD WIDGETS FOR A REACT NATIVE APP
- Also uses native code for the widgets themselves.

thehale commented 1 year ago

Since the widgets can only be made with native code, I would have to re-implement the clock on both Android and iOS, completely defeating the purpose of having used React Native in the first place. Until core React Native is more useable for widgets OR someone discovers a way to work with each platform's strict RAM limitations, I will not be working on this feature request.

thehale commented 1 year ago

Note to future developers:

While widgets are definitely the dominant preference, it may be possible to draw the app on top of others, like how Google Maps can sit around as a floating app card on top of other apps.

thehale commented 8 months ago

This has been requested multiple times in app store reviews, so I'm re-opening for further consideration.

On a personal development note, building these native widgets will be a good opportunity to learn more about the native APIs and methods for communicating effectively between react native and platform native.