Thanks, Gong, for sharing this workaround, it was very helpful! It inspired me to create a slightly simpler solution without having to convert the emoji to an image. The key is the .luminanceToAlpha() modifier. Additionally I had to add a black background, otherwise the edge was jagged. But the background is transparent in the end result. Text("😄") .background(Color.black) .compositingGroup() .luminanceToAlpha()

In my app the use case is quite simple, users can start a timer, eg a meditation. On the iPhone, they see the elapsed time in Live Activity and are able to pause or stop it. So are there any recommendations directly from the watch without having to implement push notifications? Built-in apps like timer and stopwatch work like this. This API is not available for developers?

I was dealing with the same problem but in my case the cause was somewhere else. Besides adding the widget extension, I also migrated to a single watchOS project target (there was a separate WatchKit extension before Xcode 14) and that caused the problem. The problem is described here https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/729599 When I tried it without migrating to a single target, complications stayed untouched and worked correctly after updating the app on watchOS 9 and were successfully migrated on watchOS 10.

I would add that the bug only occurs if the minimum deployment target is set below iOS 17, otherwise the animation works correctly. It's still not fixed in beta 6.