How to add a Connect IQ app to the Ege 1050 widget loop?

The simple answer is you are not doing anything wrong.  There is no way for a CIQ app on the x40 or x50 series Edge devices to access the widget loop when you swipe down from the top.  In my opinion this is a big oversite in how former widgets were implemented in the newer Edge devices.  Everything in the forum thread below applies to the Edge 1050 as well.  Your only way to access a CIQ app is either from the CIQ menu, or via a glance view on the home screen.

https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion/297612/edge-1040-widget-loop-access

System 7 did give access for data fields to do things that previously were only available to widgets or apps, such as send queries to the internet in the foreground.  With this you can create a data field instead of a widget and then put the info directly into your data screens.  That seems to be with the latest firmware the best alternative to the widget loop.

Thanks for the reply even though the answer itself is disappointing. IMHO Garmin made the wrong choice here, dropping widgets while keeping glances. Should have been the opposite for the Edge. Unfortunately what I want can't be done in a datafield because I want to use MapView.

TL;DR glances basically replaced widgets for *watches*, and I think CIQ made the decision to remove CIQ widgets (and replace them with "device apps with glance view") with watches in mind. On watches, glances and widgets are both accessed by returning to the watchface and scrolling up or down.

Clearly this doesn't make as much sense for newer Edge devices, where glances and widgets co-exist and are not accessed the same way.

bram.d said:

IMHO Garmin made the wrong choice here, dropping widgets while keeping glances. Should have been the opposite for the Edge

Not to get too far in the weeds here, but I think the history is:

CIQ 1 and 2:

- Watches originally had full-screen widgets, accessible via the watchface (by scrolling up or down)

CIQ 3:

- Watches introduced the concept of glances, which were accessible from the watchface the same way as widgets, except there were 3 per screen, to increase their usefulness to users

- For a while, watches allowed users to select between displaying full-screen widgets or 3-per-page glances (but not both at the same time).

CIQ 4:

- Finally, watches completely removed widgets and only allowed glances. At the same time, Connect IQ got rid of the concept of the "widget" *app type*, in favour of "device apps with glances". I think this was to simplify things for both the end user and dev, so that devs could release a single app which could be launched from either the app/activity list or the glance list.

So as far as Garmin *watches* are concerned, glances simply replaced widgets, as they are both launched the same way, and have many of the same traits (like timing out after a few seconds of inactivity, being unable to record an activity, having the ability to be launched during an activity, etc.).

As a matter of fact, lots of end users (and sports tech bloggers) still refer to glances as widgets, or a Connect IQ device app with a glance as a "widget" (even though the Widget app type filter is no longer present in the Connect IQ store app's search bar, if you have a modern device selected.)

All of that is to say that Garmin's choice makes a lot of sense for watches, where glances basically replaced widgets. Although there are a couple of edge cases that I think were handled badly:

- it's no longer possible to create a CIQ app that can only be launched from the glance list and not the activity/app list. However, there are plenty of native glances that aren't available in the activity/app list

- In CIQ 3, if a CIQ widget did not provide a glance view, a default view would be provided by the system. (This makes sense as it allowed an older CIQ widget that only designed for devices with full-screen widgets to be easily ported to a newer device that could also have glances.) However, if such a widget (with no glance view) is ported to a CIQ 4+ device, it will be compiled as a device app (with no glance view), which means that it no longer acts like a "widget" anymore (it can't be accessed from the watchface, it can't be launched from an activity.) More than one older widget has run into this problem (usually widgets which are most useful when launched during an activity).

If I were Garmin, I would have:

- Allowed device apps to set some attribute in the manifest to indicate that they're only allowed to be launched from the glance list (yes, I realize this is like bringing widgets ack)

- For an app which has the "widget" app type in its manifest, if it's compiled for a CIQ 4+ device and it has no glance view, a default glance view should be provided in code, so that the app preserves its widget-like behaviour.

- And yeah, now that you mention it, Garmin should've preserved the widget app type for Edge devices. Or perhaps they should've put CIQ glances in the widget UI? Idk.