SensorKit - Smart Home Widgets

EDIT: looks like the issue with widget updating has been fixed in the latest version, excellent work with this! I’ve been looking a widget like this for a long time and at first glance, it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for with support for many HomeKit sensors plus a dark mode. However, there’s a big flaw with the implementation: the widget will only update if you open the app periodically. If you don’t open the app every hour, the widget will keep showing old data. I know this is a limitation of iOS background processing but I hope the developer would find a way to around this. I’m not an iOS developer but something like a silent push notification could be an option? In conclusion, great idea and nice design, but the requirement of opening the the app every time to update widget data makes the widget really cumbersome to use.

The widgets don’t update in real time. You have to touch into them, which opens the app, then close the app to see the updated information on your widgets. Even then information shown is not always accurate to what’s actually in the Home app. Don’t buy this.

Amazing effort!! Would love the ability to customize how the widget looks. Especially changing the 24hour clock to a 12hour clock, but why stop there? Lots of wasted space in the widget and would like to be able to modify it.

Nice looking widgets, but the refresh rate is abominable. For example, right now I have a widget that hasn’t been updated in 5 hours. The FAQ is mostly excuses blaming iOS for why refresh is so infrequent, but I have other apps which update in a timely manner, so I’m disappointed in this app.

This app is a great idea and could be very useful for me to see my HomeKit sensor status at a glance. However, without background refresh, I have to open the app constantly to get the current data. This means I never know if the widgets are telling me the truth unless I have just opened the app, which renders it almost useless. Dev, if you have the ability, please fix this.

This is an update to my original review. Originally I gave 3 stars because it had room for improvement. Dropped it to 2 Stars, for the fact that I have to open the app daily to get it to “refresh” the data. Isn’t that what the background app refresh is for. The developer also reached out to me, and gave me a heads up they fixed the issue with the temp only showing in celsius, and that a few more sensors were added. Unfortunately garage doors or at least my garage door’s sensors don’t show up. I’ve now deleted the app, and probably won’t be using it going forward.

This is a good try but should have started as a Testflight beta to iron out the kinks. Not being able to use the correct temperature units results in apps that are… half baked.

Saw this from the Reddit post and I’m trying it out. I hope you roll out more features like switching between f and c temps and multi sensor widgets. I like the app and will continue to watch its development.