Apple Watch Companion app

[ShadowJonathan]

Your use case

What would you like to do?

Have Element iOS have a companion Apple Watch app.

This app would function somewhat similar to Telegram's Apple Watch app, limited in functionality, but still enough to follow conversations with.

Why would you like to do it?

Telegram offering a companion app to telegram proved to be incredibly useful with quickly glancing and following conversations while on the go, in situations where grabbing my phone would be dangerous or illegal (as it is while biking).

As Matrix offers the opportunity to do bridging, i could use Element to keep track of all of my conversations everywhere, and use the Watch app to do this even while im preoccupied.

Have you considered any alternatives?

No response

Additional context

This is not a duplicate of #4572, as that issue has found a viable alternative for its request, while I find an element-branded (and linked) app to be far more attractive.

[Anderas]

Hi @ShadowJonathan, thanks for your request. This is a valid feature / use case and one we would like to build at some point, however it obviously requires a non-trivial investment by the team. I am moving this issue into the backlog where it can be prioritized against other features. In the meanwhile, you're probably aware of https://github.com/pixlwave/Watch-The-Matrix but reposting here just in case.

[ufgkirk]

It seems like it might be possible to implement a partial integration without committing to developing a whole app, maybe this would be less intensive to do and bring some limited Apple Watch support sooner.

I don't know much about iOS specific development, but I believe this might be the way to do it: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/watchos-apps/adding-actions-to-notifications-on-watchos

As an example, I have the app for Google Voice installed, which does not list Apple Watch support, and does not install itself on to the watch as an application, however it is still possible for me to respond to a text message notification from the watch. I believe this type of partial implementation would be beneficial for watch users and require much less effort than developing a whole app for the watch, thereby making it possible to support sooner.

[pixlwave]

@ufgkirk Unfortunately we ended up removing the ability to reply to a notification in #7619 due to corruption issues. Its highly unlikely these will return in Element iOS as the team is almost fully focussed on Element X now.