Opening an app from a clock face

[SunsetRunner]

I'm building a clock face and an accompanying app. Is it possible to trigger an app to open from a clock face? I don't see anything in the documentation so I thought I'd ask here. Thanks!

[Gondwana]

This isn't a very good answer, but I think that the RHS upper button will open the first-listed app, and the RHS lower button will open the app below it. Ergo, you need to rearrange your app screens for this to work.

More broadly, there isn't much you can do in an app that you can't do in a clock face, so maybe you can combine it.

[SunsetRunner]

Thanks Catplace! I was hoping for something more along the lines of tapping a button on the clock face to launch a specific app (if it's installed), similar to how deep links work between apps on iOS and Android. The idea is to show a small amount of data on the clock face with the full data available in the app.

[Gondwana]

Yeah, I guessed something like that. Clock faces aren't limited to a single screen, so you can totally change its appearance when a button is touched. There's a thread or two about multi-screen layouts somewhere.

[SunsetRunner · Accepted solution]

I confirmed that this feature does not currently exist, so if you're interested in this feature please take a moment to upvote the feature request: https://goo.gl/x3LYc2

[Harboe]

Another basic feature that's not available. Shame.

[JonFitbit]

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@Harboe wrote:

Another basic feature that's not available. Shame.

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It doesn't mean it will never be available, why not submit a feature suggestion?

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Suggestions/idb-p/features/label-name/sdk/tab/most-kudoed

[SunsetRunner]

@JonFitbit done! You guys are doing amazing work—I've never seen a development environment so well thought out.

@Harboe @Gondwana would you mind upvoting that feature request? https://goo.gl/x3LYc2

[Harboe]

Upvoted, so lets be hopefull.

[paperinik]

why not submit a feature suggestion?

I don't think feature suggestions are actually working. Am I missing something?

[Gondwana]

@SunsetRunner Done. I like your positive attitude! 🙂

[JonFitbit]

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@paperinik wrote:

why not submit a feature suggestion?

I don't think feature suggestions are actually working. Am I missing something?

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They are, but time will tell 🙂

[paperinik]

@JonFitbit I mean having to ask developers to vote on "do you need a debugger?" or "would you like an emulator?" 🙂

Last time I was using a "development environment" without an IDE it was GW-BASIC, real story no kidding. So time doesn't seem to be much on FitBit side... 😮

[SunsetRunner]

@paperinik I would recommend reading "The Lean Startup" if you haven't already—it's a great read. Of course, Fitbit could have decided to wait until all elements of the SDK were perfectly in-place before releasing it, in which case we wouldn't be developing anything right now. Instead, they released early and are allowing the community to take part in helping them steer the ship. That's precisely what I would have recommended if I were leading that team.

[paperinik]

@SunsetRunner

First of all, that sort of thinking applies to something that's kind of breakthrough, like when they released their first product. A FitBit smartwatch, something so simple to define like asmartwatch with the FitBit app and that lasts longer than 4d on battery, is definitively nothing new and the market is pretty crowded already (and for good sake, they acquired a bunch of IP to jump start this product).

Secondly, I am not expressing a judgement on the fact that they released early, I cheer them for doing that. This is of course way better than nothing.

But I am puzzled that they seem to be asking the obvious. Asking if we need a debugger or an emulator is definitively not steering the ship, it's more like asking if the ship should have an engine or not if you want to apply the correct metaphor.
If you had that on top of that communication from FitBit is pretty tight (acknowledging a bug took a few weeks while we were baffled) you have an idea on why I asked the question to start with. And if you look at features suggestion, most of them are commented with the same copy pasted sentence, typo included, "Nice suggestion, thanks for sharing. We look forward to hearing what other community member think."
So yeah, if somebody is actually steering the ship is doing a great job at not showing it. 🙂
I would be more than happy to be surprised by the next firmware release. I have offered my help in many shapes or forms already and @JonFitbit knows that.

[Guy_]

This is an old issue has there been any changes to allow a Clock face to call an App, since this was first posted in 2018?

Due to limited memory space it would be a good solution to allow Apps to be called programmatically, rather than relying on the user having to do it manually.

In addition when an App ends it returns to the active Clock face so it would be a good way to subroutine-ize code and remain within the Clock face memory limits. It would allow much more room for developers.

[Gondwana]

Have a look at launchApp().

[Guy_]

Absolutely brilliant Peter, thanks so much.

It works fine and resolves all sorts of issues.

[Guy_]

@SunsetRunner  In light of what Peter has added you may want to change the best answer to this topic to his post.

[SunsetRunner]

This looks exactly what I was looking for, but any odea how to get the UUID of each application that it is installed on the watch?

For example, I want to launch the excercise app from the watch face so the user can start an excercise.