Background Health Store Access for Lock Screen Widgets

Question

simonfromhelix OP

Created Jun ’24

Replies 3

Boosts 1

Participants 2

It's fairly well know and stated that the Apple Health / HealthKit data store is unavailable when iPhone is locked.

Since Lock Screen Widgets were introduced there's been a feature parity mismatch with Apple's own Fitness app which is able to display updating Activity Rings on the Lock Screen. Third party apps cannot do this and have to rely unlocking their device to then trigger an update. This means they often display stale and wrong Health data.

With the release of iOS 18 beta, I see no changes to this... Is there anything I've missed?

Currently for requesting the Timeline Updates on my Widget I have to just keep requesting updates as often as possible and hope that each time the iPhone might be unlocked.... This is inefficient and a waste of device resources. Even a Widget timeline reload API that let the developer say "Only call update if iPhone unlocked" would be useful.

Boost

Answer 1

Thuri88 OP

Jun ’24

I've asked Apple Support this question about 1,5 year ago and what you would need to do is:

Add the "Data Protection" capability to the main app (so not the Widget extension)
Add “com.apple.developer.default-data-protection” entitlement key with value “NSFileProtectionComplete” to the widget target.

That way the widget will only request new timelines when the data is available (not protected) and you’ll no longer get errors.

If a reload of data would be requested when the device is locked, it will be executed when the device unlocks. Just like Apple's activity rings Lock Screen Widget.

Hope this helps and is what you're looking for!

1

Answer 2

simonfromhelix OP

Jun ’24

@Thuri88 This looks like a fantastic suggestion, Thank You!

I'll go ahead and implement this and do some testing.

You mention Apple's activity rings Lock Screen widget implementing this.... I'm fairly sure I've observed it updating throughout the day without the iPhone being unlocked at all. There's also then the problem of StandBy mode and Widget on Mac which also can't update whilst your iPhone is locked.... and lots of my users would love to see their Health data in widgets on their Mac.

I've filed a feedback again on this: FB13879739

🙏🙏 A solution may be offered one day.

0

Answer 3

Thuri88 OP

Jun ’24

Hope it helped and got you (partially) what you’re looking for! I’m not sure you can always show and update the Health data whether the device is locked or not. As far as I know and understood the HealthKit database is locked when the device is locked.

You could show a cached version of your latest data. That way you at least show something, unlocking the device will often update it. Still not a 100% what you’re looking for I guess, so if you do find a solution please let me know! :)

0