One More Thing…
On the previous episode of the podcast, when Jake and I were discussing what we’d like to see announced at WWDC, one thing we both agreed would be a great addition to the Apple Watch was custom complications, which you can think of as little widgets you can install on clock faces. Well I guess Tim and co. must be regular listeners, as we asked and they delivered!
That’s right, you can now build custom complications for your watch app and have your data appear right on the user’s chosen watch face.
Custom complications are built around the concept of families, with each family providing one or more template classes that you subclass to implement your own complication. There are currently five families of complication:
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Modular: there are small and large variants of this family, and they can be seen on the MODULAR watch face.
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Circular: there is on a small variant of this family, and it can be seen on the SIMPLE watch face.
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Utilitarian: like Modular, there are small and large variants of this family, and they can be seen on the UTILITY watch face.
See this guide for a more visual representation if you don’t have an Apple Watch or are unfamiliar with the available watch faces, and check out the Providing Custom Complications section of the watchOS 2 Transition Guide for more details on building custom complications.
Custom complications are probably the highlight of this WatchKit release for me, and I can’t wait to dive into the APIs and start building my own complications!
Where To Go From Here?
Overall, I’m pretty excited by all the new features in watchOS 2, and I look forward to working on the second edition of WatchKit by Tutorials with the Tutorial Team in the coming months.
Do keep in mind that this is only the first seed of WatchKit for watchOS 2, and as Apple releases future seeds it’s likely even more new features and APIs will be added, along with the things I’ve covered here changing or even being replaced with something even better – it’s happened before, it’ll happen again! :]
I’m curious to hear what your initial impressions on this WatchKit release are – please add your thoughts in the comments below.
