WidgetKit: Best practices for reloading widgets?

Question

Created Aug ’24

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I am working on integrating widget support into an existing app and have a question regarding the best practices for reloading a widget. For context, the existing app allows the user to add a playlist widget which will show the title, track count, and thumbnail associated with that playlist.

Within the app, playlists can of course be edited which will change the data that should be reflected on the widget. In addition, edits may happen over and over, in quick succession (ex. deleting multiple tracks, reordering tracks, etc).

My question is as follows: should the widget be reloaded every time an edit is made, or is there a way to mark a widget as needing to be reloaded?

Considering the use case where a user is editing a playlist and makes 10-20 changes in quick succession, it feels wasteful to reload a widget 10-20 times for each small change. However, the app doesn't necessarily know when the user is going to stop editing or terminate the app, so it's important that the widget is reloaded rather proactively.

In addition to the above question, is there any way to only reload a specific, single widget, rather than all widgets or all widgets of a certain kind?

Considering the use case where a user may have 3-4 playlist widgets on their homescreen, it also feels wasteful to reload all of them when only one of the playlists may have been edited. Yet, from my understanding of WidgetCenter, the only two functions for reloading a widget are reloadAllTimelines and reloadTimelines(ofKind:) which seem to only allow broad reloading.

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Answer 1

frncg OP

Sep ’24

You can try to reload the widget when the app‘s ”scenePhase” changes and moves into the background. Alternatively, try to consider changing how playlists are edited. Try adding a “Save” button that persists all the changes made in the playlist and reloads the widget instead of saving and reloading every time a change is made.

Answering your question about refreshing specific widgets, think about how many times a user will actually edit their playlists (that is assuming your app is a normal music player), your widget might not need to reload as often as you think.

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