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Comment by dpkirchner | Hacker News Reader

Some of the widgets I've used don't automatically update, so I've just had a bad impression and haven't bothered to try more, and don't really see the point in developing them. NetNewsWire's would only update when I opened the app, for example. (I could be holding it wrong, I didn't really investigate the issue.)

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This is the iOS power efficiency logic at work. Apps can schedule background tasks every 30 minutes to update their widgets, but they have like 30s of processing time to finish syncing.

But other things come into play: if the app was not launched for a while, iOS schedules the tasks less and less often. Same thing happens if low power mode is used or if memory is needed for other apps.

Can apps update the widgets when processing push notifications, in cases where they're allowed to run in response to pushes?

Yes, they can. But the same 30s limit applies, they're not allowed to do a lot of work when being launched in the background.

My crypto widget from Kraken is always 15m of less behind. At least that is what is says…

Meanwhile the purpose of widgets is that you dont have to open the app. So apple prevents successful widgets from working once you're used to them. Doomed to fail.

I’ve been using a budgeting widget which also doesn’t update until the app is opened, completely defeating the purpose of the widget. I still keep the widget on my screen just to remind myself to open it now and then.

Yes. Third party widgets wind up being big shortcuts that also happen to show outdated information.

This is it IMO. It’s the same problem as Apple Watch apps. First party widgets and apps from Apple work mostly fine. But third party ones are highly inconsistent in updating.

When the whole point of the widget or watch app is too show the status of something and it doesn’t update consistently, it’s basically useless.

So in short the problem is that most of them don’t update consistently which makes the whole category feel useless.

Is this an inherent limitation of 3party widgets or just bad programming?

Limitation of 3rd party. Apple has basically hamstrung all widgets in response to a few bad actors draining batteries.

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