Learning watchOS Development

Today, I’ve been learning watchOS development. Not necessarily to integrate with Growrilla yet, but just to explore some things.

All I can say is that it has been quite challenging. App Groups aren’t supported anymore, so it is very different from usual extensions.

This means if I want a database within a WatchOS app, I have to think of a synchronisation strategy in place. With apps that have iCloud this may be a bit easier, but still quite challenging if I don’t draw the whole system out.

An architecture could be a local database using Core Data, Realm, or GRDB and then let iCloud be the source of truth with a sync strategy. I don’t really like this cause then you have to maintain a local database and iCloud migrations. But with that, it seems like the most simple solution to creating a watchOS app with a database that is shared with a phone app.

Other than that, it is quite do-able to create a watchOS app with SwiftUI. It’s basically the same, and some APIs/views even adapt differently to watchOS automatically. This means you can comfortably share code between your iOS app and the WatchOS app.

I may consider creating a Watch extension for Growrilla but haven’t decided yet. Let’s see!