Apple Watch App Questions answered by a friendly developer

My senior developer coworker Quinn at Small Planet was kind enough to answer a bunch of our Apple Watch questions that came up.

I did learn from him that you can’t layer anything interactive, so you can’t have two buttons on top of one another.

Keep embracing the constraints!

From Quinn:

Can we register vertical swipes? And other swipe?
No gestures can be detected other than a button touch up and the similar stepper, switch interface objects. No crown access, either, sorry! Since our code doesn’t run on the watch, then smooth gestures that interact with elements on the watch aren’t possible.

Can you apple pay buy things in app?
It appears that the watch can be used as an NFC device to fulfill an Apple Pay request, although there’s nothing in the SDK documentation that provides the on-watch interface that would be required for triggering a purchase from the phone. So probably not. — Alaere: maybe you can show the status of your already ordered item?

Can I tap a map pin?
No, the map in a phone is not interactive, although if you set the map as enabled, when the user taps the map they’ll open that region in the Apple maps app on the watch which allows more interaction. Until we get our grubby wrists on one, the exact behavior of how that works is TBD.

Force touch only context menu?
Yep. As far as we can tell, that’s all you can do with force touches in Apple’s apps, too, which makes the limitation more palatable.

Can I call?
There doesn’t appear to be anything in the SDK documentation that allows starting a phone call (text message, or email, either) on the watch.

Splash screen?
Officially, no. There’s nowhere to set a wee Default.png image for the watch app. If you have your heart set on it, the initial interface could display an image for a second before reloading the real root controller(s)…

Can I send audio?
There are no mentions of playing sounds on the watch from 3rd party code. No haptic interactions, either.

Record audio?
No audio metions at all in the documentation.

Remote camera controller?
Maybe? There isn’t Apple provided code to control the camera, but in theory there is some chance that this could work. The Watch app can communicate with the parent (iPhone) app, but not officially the other way. In the case that the parent app was open and had control of the camera (after approval on the iPhone side by the user), it should be possible to take a photo from the watch. The connection between the two devices is low energy bluetooth which is not the fastest and Apple may cache communication between watch and phone for some time before transmitting your requests, so there could be latency over which you have no control.

Limit on series indicator?
Yes and no. In the current beta version running on the simulator, the series indicators keep on trucking off the side of the screen when they become too many. On the 38mm watch, that’s after 22 while the 42mm can sport 26 of the little fellows. It’s upon you to page responsibly…

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