Enhanced Developer App Statistics

J__J 1 month ago

Hi Developers!

I noticed the Connect IQ https://apps.garmin.com/apps/.... statistics seemed to be somewhat delayed.

I also wanted more detailed developer App Statistics than we currently get in the App Store website (and wanted to check if the stats were accurate )

So I put together a small Serverless app that will collect a "heartbeat" from a watch app once a day; that can provide more detailed stats:

https://github.com/blueacorn/Infocal-worker

It uses a small client on the watchface app to send a heartbeat once a day:
https://github.com/blueacorn/Infocal/blob/master/source/clients/Heartbeat.mc

I've added instructions to the worker README on how to set it up and use it.

It runs as a serverless Cloudflare 'Worker' using a 'D1' database and can be queried from the command line using 'curl' or the Cloudflare 'Wrangler' tool.

Using Cloudflare Worker, with up to 100,000 active devices (writes) a day it's free - if you have more devices than that, Cloudflare costs would be $5 USD/month for 1 million devices.

I use this to understand active-installs, versions, country/language in use, and used features.

If this is useful to anyone, or if you have any comments, let me know.

Enjoy,

Jay

eau_de_vie 1 month ago

The issue with this approach - at least for watch faces - is that having "Internet connectivity" on the list of required permissions has a negative impact on downloads. From what I've seen people are leery of watch faces with this requirement unless it's something really well-known with great reputation and lots of goodwill.

J__J 1 month ago in reply to eau_de_vie

Valid concern, for a very small minority of users. Most want weather as a minimum, which means internet connectivity.

My watch provides both local weather and air quality, both of which also need to update over internet.

As long as you properly disclose it, it's up to the user to decide. It's been designed to provide only anonymous aggregation of usage statistics for this reason.

Grigorii Entin 1 month ago

This sounds interesting, thanks! Though in my case, I probably don't exactly need to upload the stats from the watch app itself, as I can probably utilize the companion app for that.

> (and wanted to check if the stats were accurate Smiley)

Wondering if you found them accurate?

Regards,
Grigorii