• Bugs

  • bug: Watch App Complication does not update

Hi y'all, I think I found a bug or omission with the bunq🌈 Apple Watch⌚- App, the complication does not seem to update itself when your account balance changes. Or rather actually at all throughout the day....

Maybe someone from the bunq devs forgot about that? I don't know, but what ever it was, I'm not here to lay blame, after all the Watch app is brand spanking new. So it will need time to develop.

....

What I do know is that actually Apple does allow this to be updated either 50 times per day via server side push or 4 times per hour using a background task on the Apple Watch itself. To point you bunq'ers to the right developer documents, I have the following links:

Providing Data for Your Complication
Type Property complication

..and I quote:

"The system gives larger background budgets to watchOS apps with complications on the active watch face. However, it still limits the background tasks to four tasks per hour. Alternatively, you can generate the complication data on your server, and send it to the watch. This lets you move complex and time consuming tasks off the watch; however, the system limits you to 50 complication push notifications per day. Be sure that your complications can provide useful and timely information within these constraints."

Anyway, that's it for this message, as always, thanks for your attention.

    The wonderful thing about the bunq Watch app is the at-a-glance live information it provides on your wrist. I was excited to see the introduction of the watch face complication yesterday to make this even more quick and accessible. Unfortunately it looks like, as you say, the complication doesn’t update very often. It sat for hours on the old value after I had done a transaction which changed the balance of my account. To be able to trust the information on the screen, it would be great if it could at least update a few times an hour. Or even better, make clever use of background notifications so that it updates exactly when the account balance in question is affected. ⌚️👍

      @DaveFlash#147075 We actually went the extra mile and send custom "complication" notifications to update the complication. Unfortunately, there's a bug in WatchOS that sometimes causes the notifications not to be delivered properly and then the notifications get stuck at Apple's side.

      After a while, it usually starts working. We found that having the watch app open while making a transfer on your iPhone sometimes helps all the notifications get "unstuck" at Apple (this causes a notification to be sent to the wach app and somehow makes watchos remember that they have to be delivered).

      (Apple is aware of this bug, but there's no fix for it as of now)

        @DaveFlash#147136 @vampjon#147096 I got some more information on this: removing the watch app and reinstalling often does work for complication pushes to work again

          @Andreas#147173 I've tried it and it only seems to work for a short time, then later, it's again not updating anymore...

            @DaveFlash#147209 We really don’t know any other workarounds: we rely on Apple’s complication pushes here which seem unreliable on watchOS 6 :(

              @DaveFlash#147209 Just a shot in the dark: is background app refresh enabled for the bunq app on the watch?

                @Andreas#147211 Ok understood. Maybe inspiration will strike your devs and you can find a different way to work around apple’s bugs.

                  @Andreas#147213 Where can I find that setting?

                    @DaveFlash#147215 Under settings > general on the watch

                      @Andreas#147216 oké, will check, one moment. UPDATE 14:14: Yes is on, also for bunq, has never been off really.

                        @Andreas#147213 As far as I’m aware, only the Calendar complication is allowed to update real-time and constantly in the background? The others can only update once every x time when the Watch wakes, otherwise it’s discarded by the Watch?

                        We suffer a similar problem in a FOSS-app and decided to leverage the calendar complication instead to feed the data in to. (Far from ideal, but for the purpose of the particular (medical) app very important.)

                          @LH-Black-Wolf#147340 There’s a thing such as complication pushes, which can be send up to 50 times a day and are always received when the user has an active complication.

                          Only downside is that they seem to get stuck from time to time for some users on watchos6 :(

                            @Andreas#147342 Ah that explains it, we push new data every 5 minutes hehe.

                              @DaveFlash#147219 All I can say is that for the people it isn’t working at one point in time the pushes magically will go thru (and a bunch of them will be delivered in quick succession)

                                The update of the complication doesn't work for me either. Doesn’t matter how long I do wait. It only works if I open the app on the watch and the app has updated the account balance after a short time. I think that means that background refreshing (of the app) doesn’t work either. But it is enabled in the watch system settings.

                                  @Slummi#147432 have you tried removing the watch app and reinstalling it?