Chronodget 3.0.0 has landed in the app store. As every year I’ve raised the minimum required iOS to the current one — 17 — and updated the code accordingly.

The usage of the Observable macro that was introduced at WWDC 2023 enabled me to change the code to work as it was originally intended. When I started developing Chronodget in October 2020 I had some expectations regarding how the declarative UI would react to changes in the data model. I was somewhat disappointed that it did not react to changes in nested objects and had to add workarounds and restructure the code to match the capabilities of SwiftUI at that time. With the Observable macro I could get rid of most of those workarounds and make the code much cleaner.

This update comes with two new templates one of which is named “Abstract Timepiece”. It’s not really meant to show an exactly readable time. It just conveys an impression of how time flows. The background changes from morning to evening and also from the start of the year to its end. And the rounded rectangles show the progress of the month, week, day and current hour.

While working on it I noticed that the percentage calculation for monthly time frames was buggy and fixed that.

Also while working on this widget, I noticed not for the first time that when using background objects filling the whole widget, neither the selected cell background nor the crosshairs are visible. Therefore there is now an additional button in the navigation bar to add translucency to every component in the widget making everything behind them also visible.

If you’ve already installed Chronodget, you should have gotten the update by now. Otherwise you can always get it in the App Store.