Acknowledged
2 months ago

Feature Request: Allow CIQ 4.0 "super apps" to exist only as glances (and not icons in the activity/app launcher)

Background:

In CIQ 4.0 devices, native apps have the ability to exist only in the glance list, and not in the activity/app launcher. There are many of examples of this, such as the steps glance and HR glance.

In general a native app has at least 3 combinations of "launcher modes":

- glance list only

- activity/app launcher only

- glance list and activity/app launcher (this seems rare)

(I'll ignore other launcher modes like the controls menu, hot keys, settings menu, and watchface complications)

However, CIQ 4.0 device apps / widgets ("super apps") only have the following 2 combos:

- activity / app launcher only

- glance list and activity/app launcher

Feature Request:

As a CIQ developer, I would like to be able to implement an app which is only available from the glance list, and not the app launcher, for the following reasons:

- it's an app meant primarily to provide "glanceable" information that can be quickly accessed by the end user. It doesn't make sense for this app icon to clutter up the activity/app launcher,

- native apps can do this, so why not CIQ apps?

As a user who recently upgraded from 945 LTE to 955 myself, I found it disconcerting that my favorite CIQ widgets now appear in the activity list by default. I know that I can remove them manually, but that's an extra step. I realize that this behavior is intentional, though. Maybe a compromise would be to add a new flag to the manifest which specifies that a super app should not appear in the activity/app list by default?

I also noticed that some CIQ widgets (which were originally created prior to the introduction of super apps) actually have *less* functionality in the activity list as opposed to the glance list. This is because the newly implemented glance view provides information that isn't present in the activity list or when actually "opening" the app.

e.g. Battery Graph: https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/923cd514-fe15-476c-855e-26846d2007ec#0

When I first install this widget, the glance shows me my current battery level, but when I initially open the app, all I get is a message saying that battery information is still being gathered. To be fair, this is a temporary situation but it seems like an example of an app which makes more sense to live in the glance list rather than the activity/app list.

FlowState
  • over 1 year ago

    There could be something else in play right now - multitasking which was announced with the venu3

    https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/b/news-announcements/posts/venu-3-now-available-on-connect-iq-sdk-manager

    Right, I forgot about that. But now that I re-read it again, I worry that even if developers handle this as expected, it is going to cause confusion for users. Especially if native activity apps don't have the same restrictions. If a user is using a CIQ walking app, for example, and then going to a CIQ app that needs the GPS and the walking activity loses GPS tracking, who is the user going to blame?

  • over 1 year ago in reply to FlowState

    I could be wrong, but I think one of the motivations for super apps is to give devs a way to provide both a glance and an activity list item in a single app. They probably noticed that lots of devs had both device app and widget versions of the same app in the store, and decided this is a sub-optimal user experience.

    You are probably right , and it's what I suspected also. That said, I tried to find some examples and I came up short. In fact, the only use-case that really made sense to me was music apps, like Spotify where you have a glance that shows the current song and some controls, and an app where you handle syncing and show more song detail. But we already have a music app type.

  • over 1 year ago

    In the case of 945 LTE, it's probably the case that if you return to the watchface while a CIQ app is open (but not recording), the app is probably terminated. That would explain the difference in behavior between CIQ app which is recording and CIQ app which is not recording.

  • over 1 year ago in reply to dbrobert

    The other downside to the "super apps" is that it has impacted activity apps, in that you can no longer access CIQ widgets when running a CIQ activity. On the Fenix 6 series you get an error that the activity will stop when you try to access a CIQ widget and on the Fenix 7 (Epix 2) series the activity just ends.

    You mean a CIQ device app that's recording an activity, right. But even on pre-CIQ 4.0 devices (like Fenix 6 as you said), the device will prevent you from opening a CIQ widget/glance when a CIQ app is running.

    What I've seen:

    935: (CIQ 3.1.6, "older UI") If a CIQ app is open (whether recording an activity or not), if you scroll to a CIQ widget you will get a message which says the CIQ app will be closed if you open the widget

    945 LTE: (CIQ 3.4.2, "newer UI", but not CIQ 4) If a CIQ app is open and not recording, if you scroll to a CIQ widget/glance and press START, the widget opens. If the CIQ app is recording and you open a CIQ widget, the widget crashes

    955: (CIQ 4) haven't tested this in depth, as I haven't installed any CIQ apps which can record an activity yet.

    I have read a lot of the threads about various regressions / functionality changes with CIQ 4 watches and glances/widgets with interest, so I know people aren't happy with some of the changes

  • over 1 year ago

    I think it's great that widgets/glances have access to more memory but if I was making the decision, I would have kept widgets as is but simply have made more memory available to them. I have only built a dozen widgets or so but I have trouble seeing how any widget needs as much memory as is available.

    I could be wrong, but I think one of the motivations for super apps is to give devs a way to provide both a glance and an activity list item in a single app. They probably noticed that lots of devs had both device app and widget versions of the same app in the store, and decided this is a sub-optimal user experience.

    Now that super apps exist, you can easily deploy a single app that has both a glance and an activity list item, or just an activity list item, but the use case of "glance only" is now gone. I know everyone knows this, but to me it's a step backwards for certain types of apps.

    My personal use case is I want to build an app which only makes sense as a glance. It's for end users who are complaining about certain functionality that was removed from native watchfaces and who do not wish to install a CIQ watchface to get this functionality back (you can probably guess what the functionality is.) One user even suggested that Garmin could provide a native glance which provides this information. My goal is provide a CIQ glance for exactly that kind of user. So I can put "glance" in the title of my app, and I can tell users it's really designed to be used as a glance, but what I can't do is prevent it from being added to the activity/app list by default.